Biracial woman claims to be Strom Thurmond's daughter

[jackelope]

From the NY Times:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - After a lifetime of public silence, a 78-year-old Los Angeles woman is stepping forward to say she is the daughter of the late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and a black woman who once worked as the Thurmond family maid.

The woman, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a retired vocational school teacher, says she has incontrovertible evidence, including financial receipts and cashier’s checks demonstrating his support for her and personal notes - showing that Mr. Thurmond, once one of the nation’s leading segregationists, was her father.

Wow. The hypocrisy is just mind-boggling:

For years, Mr. Thurmond was a staunch supporter of segregation. He broke with the Democratic Party in the late 1940’s to run for president in 1948 as a Dixiecrat, embracing the notion, as he said at the time, that “on the question of social intermingling of the races, our people draw the line.” Ms. Washington-Williams was in her early 20’s at the time.

Just incredible.

Remember the headline on The Onion when Thurmond died? “Strom Thurmond Finally, Finally Dies.”

[ITR_champion]

Actually, this has been an open secret of sorts for a while. Slate magizine discussed it here shortly after Strom’s death. I read about it for the first time in The Nation about five years ago, and I think it’s been known since before that. However, I’ve never seen it mentioned by any notable mainstream source, even when writing their brief biographies of the guy. Funny that CNN/Faux News/MSNBC could devote an entire year’s worth of coverage to a stain on a blue dress, but apparently they had no need to mention this.

[astro]

Odd that she waited all this time. He got lucky she was so laid back.

[John_Carter_of_Mars]

I’ve got incontrovertable evidence that for decades I was Natalie Wood’s secret lover.
Husbands came(or not) and went, but I was a constant in her life up until that Wagner jerk let her drown. She was trying to escape him and meet me at our Special Place**[sup]TM**[/sup] when she drowned.

Oh yeah, my proof? I’ve got all these pictures of her from movie posters and stuff.

OK, so the above by me is dreamin’, and maybe this woman’s claim is true. Why wait until he’s dead and you’re 78 to mention this?
I’ll be skeptical until a bunch of documentation is made public. The irony is interesting, but this knowledge could have been of some use decades ago. Today it’s just a curiosity.

Maybe her checks would have been cut off if she’d gone public while he was still alive?

[Briny_Deep]

I saw her pic, and she looks like Strom. It’s kinda creepy, actually.

I’m under the impression she chose not to out him because he was paying her handsomely, and they had a relationship or friendship. After Thurmond’s death, the lady’s children urged her to come forward to “put it behind them,” whatever that means. At any rate, coming forward now doesn’t damage Strom’s career, as coming forward in his lifetime would have done. I’m sure she spared him for their mutual benefit.

[astro]

According to this story in the Wash Post she was still getting a cash payment each year from Thurmond until he died.

It may be extreme hypocrisy on Thurmond’s part, but to keep sucking at the “here’s some more money, now keep quiet” tit all your life into your late 70’s doesn’t seem particularly noble either.

Damned if she doesn’t look just like him though.

Strom Jr. did not return a phone call seeking comment. In interviews over the years, Thurmond’s sisters and staff have repeatedly said that Williams was only a family friend.

Williams said she met with Thurmond and received money at least once a year in sessions arranged by his Senate staff. In recent years, as the senator’s health declined, she said, financial assistance was passed through a prearranged conduit, a Thurmond relative in South Carolina. Williams’s attorney declined to specify the amounts of money she received, saying that information would be provided later.

Williams’s account resurrects one of the oldest stories in 20th-century southern political folklore. Over the years, Thurmond had called the allegation that he fathered a mixed-race child too unseemly to warrant comment. Noted political writer Robert Sherrill described an alleged daughter without providing a name in a 1968 book. The Post identified Williams by her maiden name in 1992, in a lengthy account of Williams’s relationship with Thurmond. The article reported that “both Thurmond and the supposed daughter have denied that he is her father, and no one has provided evidence that he is.”

Recently, Williams said media pressure has intensified, with interview requests from every major television network. She declined, consistently calling Thurmond a “family friend” who had merely provided her with financial assistance.

“I did not want anybody to know I had an illegitimate father,” said Williams, who has four grown children. “My children convinced me to tell the truth. I want to finally answer all of these questions … that have been following me for 50 or 60 years.”

[E.Thorp]

She deserves our sympathy. Isn’t looking like Strom Thurmond punishment enough?

On a slightly more serious note, I’m not sure I agree with the OP that Thurmond was hypocritical. Isn’t segregationism about, among other things, maintaining an imbalance of power? Likewise, I’d imagine, for an encounter between the scion and the maid.

[Evil_Captor]

I have it on good authority from a very attractive female friend that breifly worked in Thurmond’s office that he was a major hound, even in his 90s. Yah, he tried to put the moves on her.

[Evil_Captor]

As for evidence, a little DNA should seal the deal if anyone’s serious about wanting evidence.

[Larry_Mudd]

I just heard CNN’s Aaron Brown say “Strom Thurmond’s lovechild.”

I find that immensely cheering, somehow.

[hajario]

The Thurmond family just admitted that it’s the truth.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/12/15/thurmond..paternity/index.html

Haj

[Marley23]

Hey, now Strom has TWO things in common with Thomas Jefferson.

An interracial lovechild, and being born in the mid-18th century.

[misstee]

*Originally posted by Marley23 *
**Hey, now Strom has TWO things in common with Thomas Jefferson.

An interracial lovechild, and being born in the mid-18th century. **

BAWHAAAAA

This so far is the highlight of my day at home, snowed in with the kids.

[FriarTed]

I heard this a year ago, several months before he died, from a Thurmond biographer on C-SPAN’s Booknotes.

[Kizarvexius]

*Originally posted by Marley23 *
**Hey, now Strom has TWO things in common with Thomas Jefferson.

An interracial lovechild, and being born in the mid-18th century. **

Once again, Marley23 shoots, Marley23 scores! Thanks for the best laugh I’ve had this week.

Keep warm, Misstee. Send some of your snow down here. I’d be glad to have it.

[Intaglio]

Why did she come out now?, What’s the point?, if she doesn’t want any of the estate and she doesn’t want to be part of his family, Why say anything now?, She should have kept her mouth shut.

[mouthbreather]

“Why say anything now?”

I can’t say that I know her intentions, but I’m all for anything that shows an out-and-out racist (yeah, he reformed later…I know, but I’m talking about his presidential run in 1948) to be a total hypocrite is good in my book.

[ParentalAdvisory]

Ok, so where is the picture of this woman?

[Earthling]

Picture.

[Mr.Moto]

I don’t want to defend Strom too much here. Lord knows there was much that was indefensible about the man.

But those that point out the hypocrisy of Strom must also acknowlege the hypocrisy of segregation itself, perpetrated by an entrenched elite and kept in place by a one party political system in the Southern states. And, big newsflash to liberal Dopers, that was by no means the Republican party.

Strom was in his early twenties when Essie Mae was born. Publicly caliming her as his daughter would have made him a laughingstock and virtually unemployable. Marrying her mother would have been a crime. Even being seen with her mother in a social setting would have made them both targets for the Klan. And say what you like about Strom Thurmond, he was never a Klansman or a Klan sympathizer, unlike other senators (Byrd) that come to mind.

What is the best thing, really, that could come out of a situation like this? Probably what happened, for Strom to give his daughter some money, an education, and opportunities for happiness in life, preferably in places where such segregation didn’t occur.