Posted on 12/18/2004 5:27:00 AM PST by alloysteel
WASHINGTON — The biracial daughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond more than once confronted her father over his racist politics, but cherished their relationship and ignored pleas from her family that she expose her parentage.
"For all his bluster, for all his racist campaign posturing, I somehow couldn't dislike him the way I wanted to," writes Essie Mae Washington-Williams, 79, in "Dear Senator," an autobiography to be released next month.
The daughter of the longtime champion of segregation and his family's black maid has refrained from speaking publicly since she revealed the secret of her birth. That was a year ago, six months after Thurmond's death.
"Dear Senator," titled after the way she addressed her letters to Thurmond, answers many of the questions that have swirled around a relationship kept secret for nearly eight decades.
Years could go by between meetings, Washington-Williams writes, but she and Thurmond saw each other at least a dozen times over his lifetime — in Philadelphia when he returned from World War II; at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, the black college he paid for her to attend; and in his Senate office in Washington, D.C., where she was introduced as a family friend.
It bothered her that he rarely touched her beyond a handshake, and that even privately he only a few times called her "daughter."
An excerpt
In 1964, Essie Mae Washington-Williams confronted her father, Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., in his Senate office. She asked:
"Do you look at me as a Negro, senator?"
"I look at you with a lot of pride, Essie Mae," he said, always knowing how to flatter his way out of a tight corner. This time it wouldn't work.
"I hate to say this, sir, but do you realize how black people feel about you?" I asked him point blank, amazed at my own boldness.
"I'm dedicated to the improvement of the Negro race ... ." He was trying to turn this into a campaign speech. I wouldn't let him.
"Black people HATE you, senator. My husband HATES you. I tried to speak up for you. But he hates you. Almost all black people do. They don't see you as a friend. They see you as the enemy. Their worst enemy. Is that the way you want to be looked at?"
He sat silently again, astonished at what I was saying. He wasn't angry. He didn't think I was being "uppity." He was just stunned.
"More and more black people are going to be voting. They want you out of office. Do you want them to turn you out, sir? Because if you don't, you better change your ways."
— From "Dear Senator" by Essie Mae Washington-Williams and William Stadiem.
"How does it feel to be the daughter of the governor?" Thurmond asked her on a visit to her university.
Thurmond, credited with improving education for blacks in South Carolina and speaking out against lynching while he was governor, assumed a different mantle as a national politician.
In 1948, he ran for president on the segregationist States Rights ticket. He mounted the longest filibuster in Senate history with his stand against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Thurmond was a Democrat until he switched to the Republican Party in 1964.
He once said: "There's not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches."
"I wasn't sure if this was my father talking or the ghost of Adolf Hitler," Washington-Williams writes.
She brought up the hypocrisy between his private and public relationship with blacks at least once. In 1964, then the wife of a civil-rights lawyer and the mother of four children, Washington-Williams stopped by Thurmond's Senate office.
"If you mean what you say," she stammered, "how could you ... how could you ... love ... my mother?"
"He didn't speak for the longest time," she writes. "He just looked like the wind had been punched out of him. It was a question he never expected to be called upon to answer. And he didn't. He kept silent."
The author, a retired Los Angeles schoolteacher, describes a covert romance between Thurmond and her mother, Carrie Butler, who were 23 and 15, respectively, when they met.
Taken from South Carolina to be raised by Butler's sister in the Pennsylvania steel town of Coatesville, Washington-Williams didn't learn her mother's identity until she was 13.
When Washington-Williams was 16 and for the first time visiting her family in Edgefield, S.C., Butler brought her to the law office of attorney Strom Thurmond. She introduced him as her father.
Washington-Williams had no idea that her father was white, not to mention one of the most powerful men in town.
She was stunned and speechless, but noticed that Thurmond's hand lingered on Carrie Butler's.
"They were in love, clearly in love," she writes.
Washington-Williams' husband, and later her children, pressured her to reveal Thurmond's paternity.
(Three of Washington-Williams' four children — Thurmond and Butler's grandchildren — live in Washington state: Monica Williams-Hudgens, 47, an advocate for victims of domestic violence who lives in Silverdale, Kitsap County, and works in Seattle; Dr. Ronald Williams, 53, an emergency-room doctor in Chehalis; Julius Thomas Williams III, 54, a Seattle Metro bus driver; and Wanda Terry, 49, a Los Angeles information-technology entrepreneur. There also are 13 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.)
Washington-Williams could strike a blow, they said, against those who spoke and voted against racial equality. Julius Williams called the thousands of dollars that Thurmond had given his wife over the years "hush money."
But Washington-Williams wouldn't talk until Thurmond died.
She writes that the money was the only way he knew how to express affection toward her.
"It's not that Strom Thurmond ever swore me to secrecy. He never swore me to anything. He trusted me, and I respected him, and we loved each other in our deeply repressed ways, and that was our social contract."
Washington-Williams writes that she was "finally free" when she went public last year.
Since then, and based on her patrimony, she has applied for membership in the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She's also trying to claim some of Thurmond's estate.
Valued at $1.48 million, most of it was left to Thurmond's three surviving white children, and none to Washington-Williams.
Her autobiography, co-authored by William Stadiem, will be released next month by ReganBooks.
Eh? She's telling the truth of their relationship. If I were her, I'd be a lot more harsh and I'd be holding press conferences way before he died.
Sounds like she needs some book money...
All of the NAACP race-pimp types down here were trying to get her to denounce Ol' Strom as some sort of ogrish racist, to stand up and shout how she had been victimized. She would not do it. She handled the entire thing with amazing grace and class and won everyone's heart while doing it.
}:-)4
His daughter has become one of his saving graces.
If she can appreciate him despite his early political opinions then toehr can too.
and the injustice continued even after death. His white children inherited all his money.
I recognize hypocracy whether it's from the left or right.
Agreed. She's one amazing lady.
Actually, I don't know if the inheritance is one issue we can attack him as being hypocritical on. Thurmond supported her and gave her money all her life, as both a means of support and showing affection. It would depend on the total amount of money she accumulated. Then again, a father's love and presence--which his white children got but she didn't--is of infinite worth.
It was a different time, a different place back then. I hope she finds peace of mind and I think she should be included in his estate equally with his other children.
As I am sure he did his white children.
His white children are in the will and she isn't. It's the ultimate form of denial.
She refused to put him down in an interview last year despite being given many opportunities to do so. She also showed a wonderful sense of humor and had so much sparkle in her. She will write a book, and the book will disappoint many NAACP types. She recongized her father as a flawed human being, we all have flaws, and she loved and accepted him.
Point ceded. Her grace is quite humbling.
Back when Grover Cleveland was running for President, it came out that he had an out-of-wedlock child. When confronted with this datum, Candidate Cleveland roared back, "I fed, clothed and educated my b-stard child. What did you do for YOURS?"
Strom fed, clothed and educated his. Can't say the same for many other men, far less conscientious than Strom, who have chosen to scorn and criticize him.
So much of this reminds me of the story 'Queen' by Alex Haley.
Unbelievable!
She hated her own father.
The lesson I learn from this is that she puts race before her own father. My question to others is: Is race the issue that trumps all other issues? For her it was, but was it right?
In 1964, Essie Mae Washington-Williams confronted her father, Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., in his Senate office. She asked:"
"Thurmond was a Democrat until he switched to the Republican Party in 1964. "
So, did everybody 'hate him'. . .was he hated by the Democrats and/or the Reublicans? Am trying to figure why R- S.C. figures into this. . .printed in the way it is above (part of the excerpt I assume)
I mean. . .since sentence begins. ..In 1964, Essie Mae. . .confronted her father. . .Would it not be more to the point. . .more clear to write. . .
'Stom Thurmond'. . .R - S.C. - having just given up his Democrat Party membership. . .(or somesuch. . .)
Perhaps I am being too picky?
Unbelievable!
She hated her own father.
The lesson I learn from this is that she puts race before her own father. My question to others is: Is race the issue that trumps all other issues? For her it was, but was it right?
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