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Strom Thurmond's Black Daughter (MSN.com nastiness alert!)
msn.com ^ | July 1, 2003 | Diane McWhorter

Posted on 07/03/2003 1:36:54 PM PDT by Saundra Duffy

Strom's Skeleton The late segregationist's black daughter. By Diane McWhorter Posted Tuesday, July 1, 2003, at 12:11 PM PT

Thurmond: curiouser and curiouser

In all the words spent on Strom Thurmond's life and times since his death last week, I have seen no acknowledgment of the most interesting of his sundry racial legacies. She is Essie Mae Washington Williams, a widowed former school teacher in her 70s, living in Los Angeles. Presumably she did not show up for any of the obsequies even though Strom Thurmond was almost certainly her father. Williams is black.

Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson present persuasive evidence in their 1998 biography, Ol' Strom, that Thurmond sired a daughter in 1925 with a black house servant named Essie "Tunch" Butler, with whom he reputedly had an extended relationship. Though "Black Baby of Professional Racist" would seem to sail over the man-bites-dog bar of what is news, the story has never really gotten traction. The particulars of this family saga simply do not fit into the "redemption narrative" Americans tend to impose on our more regrettable bygones: Better that ol' Strom "transformed" from the Negro-baiting Dixiecrat presidential candidate of 1948 to One of the First Southern Senators To Hire a Black Aide in 1971.

In contrast to, say, George "I Was Wrong" Wallace, Thurmond has always been an ornery redemption project. He did not repent. Even so, his illegitimate daughter further complicates the moral picture. Does she mean that he was even more heinous than we knew? Or that—dude!—he wasn't such a racist bastard after all?

We need not dwell on the obvious mind-boggling hypocrisies here: that someone who ran for president on an anti-pool-mixin' platform was party to an integrated gene pool. Or that Thurmond's other signature political achievement—the 24-hour-without-bathroom-break filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957—was done in the name of sparing the South from "mongrelization." This form of duplicity has been a Southern tradition dating back to those miscegenating slave owners. Their peculiar conflation of shame and honor was captured in 1901 Alabama, at a constitutional convention called to disfranchise blacks. A reactionary old ex-governor known for being good to his mulatto "yard children" was aghast that the insincere anti-Negro propaganda fomented by him and his peers might bring actual injury to its objects. He demanded to know why, "when the Negro is doing no harm, why, people want to kill him and wipe him from the face of the earth."

Even as Thurmond was making a career of segging against his own flesh and blood, he himself wasn't a complete cad. If he didn't exactly claim Essie Mae Williams, neither did he disown her. He gave her money and paid her regular visits (and probably tuition) at the black South Carolina college where she was a "high yaller" sorority girl while he was governor of the state. And in some ways, Williams has played the dutiful daughter, insisting over the long years that Thurmond was merely a "family friend." (Efforts to reach her failed.)

I do not pretend to fully understand these dynamics—and urge those interested in the nexus of race and sex to consult Joel Kovel's White Racism: A Psychohistory. But I know this: Thurmond's secret interracial sex life was complementary to the conspicuously virginal choices he made to be his public consorts. The year before being named the Dixiecrat nominee in 1948, the 44-year-old Thurmond was photographed by Life standing on his head for his lovely 21-year-old fiancee. Caption: "Virile Governor." Thurmond's second bride, young enough at 22 to be the 66-year-old senator's granddaughter, was a former Miss South Carolina. Both wives (No. 1 died of a brain tumor at 33) were the proverbial "flower of southern womanhood," the ideal that justified segregation's direst form of social control, the ritual castration of lynching. Those fair and nubile white women gave Thurmond's ugly politics a shiny emotional gloss that blinded the Southern conscience to the shame of the Essie Mae Williamses.

The reason the South is the most interesting region in the country is that it's the only place where the psychic landscape is parceled out equally among Marx, Freud, and God. Thurmond straddled all three provinces, hard though it has sometimes been to distinguish them under the ground cover of race. (For a different angle on this, see Clarence Thomas.) The Marx part of Thurmond's story is the best-known: The States Rights Party ("Dixiecrat" was the coinage of a waggish newspaper editor) that drafted him for president in 1948 was a top-down junta of oligarchs who had been plotting their bolt from the New Deal Democratic Party since 1941, when Franklin Roosevelt created the Committee on Fair Employment Practice to eliminate race discrimination in war industries.

Racial conflict as a diversion from class conflict is nothing new, of course. But somehow Thurmond's subterranean Freudian life—significant relationships with a black daughter and her mother—brings a fresh level of appall to the immorality of his demagoguing. That it was just "bidness" may account for why Strom Thurmond never felt compelled to ask the forgiveness of a race he devoted so much public capital to making miserable—a race that included members of his own family. Then again, he had always been an integrationist.

As for God, I can't help but wonder if Thurmond felt he had been forsaken by the all-merciful Christian deity and stumbled into the tragic realm of Greek fate when, in 1993, a drunk driver hit and killed the 22-year-old white daughter he did acknowledge, just before she was to enter the Miss South Carolina contest. In any case, if Thurmond seemed to continually elude the harsh verdict of history, now he faces divine judgment. In Doug Marlette's recent editorial cartoon, the angel greeting Ol' Strom at heaven's gate is black. And the sign reads: "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: black; daughter; strom; thurmond
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To: PJ-Comix
Maxine Waters?

I think that could be true...there was even a movie made: "The Bad Seed"

41 posted on 07/03/2003 2:35:12 PM PDT by ErnBatavia (Bumperootus!)
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To: cyborg
Too bad interracial marriage was outlawed in the South. Makes you wonder why in the first place.

Bump. ;-)

42 posted on 07/03/2003 2:39:20 PM PDT by Wordsmith
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To: gitmo
The article is not well written, but it is indicating that the Dixiecrats were a Democratic Party alternative to the Marxist road down which FDR was leading the nation. It is also implying that the race issue was a means of deflecting voters from the class issue of the socialist wing of the Democratic Party.

The article is not well written if one has to infer what it is attempting to convey.

43 posted on 07/03/2003 2:41:52 PM PDT by happygrl
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To: Saundra Duffy; aShepard
Here's what happens when we post an article without including the words of the original title in our own version. Someone else comes along and posts it again.

(Yes, that one has a problem, too. aShepard: If you'll click Report Abuse on your article, and ask them to put a space in SkeletonThe, they will. Otherwise, we just might see #3 before day's end. ;-)

44 posted on 07/03/2003 3:01:17 PM PDT by newgeezer (We learn by trail and errror. :-)
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To: Saundra Duffy
Thurmond's second bride, young enough at 22 to be the 66-year-old senator's granddaughter, was a former Miss South Carolina.

This is more interesting than a possible love child. 22.... 66.... perv. Lucky perv.

45 posted on 07/03/2003 3:06:33 PM PDT by zoyd (My nameplate medallion says "Never Trust A HAL 9000")
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To: happygrl
Who cares? If the woman does not want to claim Strom as her father, why force the issue? It would seem to me that this woman is a private citizen and does not need the press meddling in her life. It would also seem to me that the other two people who really have any right to know in this situation are dead - her mother is presumably dead and Sen. Thurmond is dead. I'd say this lady (or possibly any children she may or may not have) are the only ones with the right to even suggest a paternity test! And it doesn't sound like she wants one.

Let's not try to revise history. The south of the first half of this century was considerably different than the south of today. We may not like the ethics and mores of the time, but the times were what they were.

However if you want to look at it from the perspective of 2003, AND if you want to accept the story as fact (and I really have no strong opinion either way, I just think it's not really my concern), then consider the following:

1. Sen. Thurmond didn't marry for the first time until the 1950's so he wasn't cheating on a spouse.

2. The story states that he visited her, provided financial support, and probably paid her way through college. (I'm sure she wasn't the only child of a family employee he helped in the same ways over the years.)

So the story says we have a political figure who may have fathered a child out of wedlock, may have supported and educated the child, did so with little or no scandal, the child in question is a retired teacher who has lead an upstanding life. All this in an era 40 years before the birth control pill.

(begin sarcasm) Geez. You're right. That sure does sound irresponsible and scandalous to me too. You'd think he was a married man, cheated with an intern, lied under oath to congress, and had a string of sexual harrassment claims following him around. (end sarcasm)

Speaking of which - despite Sen Thurmond's reputation for admiring beautiful women, does anyone have any recollection of a single sexual harrassment allegation against him? I sure don't!
46 posted on 07/03/2003 3:23:49 PM PDT by Proud2BeFree
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To: Saundra Duffy
"ALMOST certainly" + ladies "he's a family friend" = this article is a load of crap!
47 posted on 07/03/2003 4:06:36 PM PDT by Ed_in_NJ
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To: Proud2BeFree
Uh gee...., I don't know how my comments provoked your response, but have a nice day !
48 posted on 07/03/2003 9:12:19 PM PDT by happygrl
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To: cyborg
Strom would have been bored if no one attacked him-alive or dead. However, this lady ( & she sounds like she might indeed meet the definition ) is the one really harmed by this cheap & poorly concocted assault. Imagine the low sort who would attempt to contact her! What awful, ugly, mean treatment for someone who has done nothing wrong!

You have picked the important aspect of this article. The mob is an ugly beast.
49 posted on 07/04/2003 2:25:42 AM PDT by GatekeeperBookman
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To: happygrl
Sorry bout that HappyGirl. That response wasn't directed at you specifically :) I was just trying to add a comment to the thread. I'm still learning my way around here :)
50 posted on 07/04/2003 4:26:17 AM PDT by Proud2BeFree
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To: cyborg
Yes why bring it up now, esp. since Thurmond is dead and his daughter from his 'wild youth' is 70? Is this not more hurtful to the daughter who now is reminded she was cast aside because someone said it was wrong for black and white people to marry or to have kids together?

I'm reading this with a little more compassion. Even with the tone of the article, it is acknowledged that he supported the girl financially and spent at least some time with her. I see this as a very complex issue when the values and the realities of the time are considered.

One of the important things is that nobody is condemning the daughter or calling her a lesser person because of her heritage. This story is nowhere near as unethical as the one that brought up that Representative who was supporting an illegitimate child who was still in high school and her parentage was private. It's the stories that affect children that cross the line.

51 posted on 07/04/2003 4:42:21 AM PDT by grania ("Won't get fooled again")
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To: newgeezer
re: your correction.

Thanks newsie, but I don't see any problem in my title. Would someone have changed it without my request to do so???
52 posted on 07/07/2003 6:24:16 AM PDT by aShepard
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To: aShepard
Thanks newsie, but I don't see any problem in my title. Would someone have changed it without my request to do so???

Yes, it got corrected on Thursday. :-)

53 posted on 07/07/2003 7:07:33 AM PDT by newgeezer (Just my opinion, of course. Your mileage may vary. You have the right to be wrong.)
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