ABSTRACT
Th e election of 1948 was telling. Strom Th urmond, States’ Rights Democratic Party presidential candidate, echoed his party’s slogan of “Segregation Forever” for the entire country to hear. Th urmond carried four Southern states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina), and received over one million votes and thirty-nine electoral votes from those in favor of continuing racial apartheid. In addition to his segregationist activities, Strom Th urmond also fi libustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (he spoke for a still unbroken Senate record of 24 hours and 18 minutes), he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and he voted against confi rming Th urgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. It wasn’t until aft er Th urmond’s death in 2003 that his estate publicly acknowledged the existence of his biracial daughter, Essie May Washington-Williams, whom he fathered with sixteen-year-old Carrie Butler (a servant in his family’s home) when he was twenty-two. Th urmond met his daughter when she was a teen, and though he did not publicly acknowledge Mrs. Washington-Williams during his lifetime, he did provide for her education and regularly communicated with her in private.1 Th urmond’s commitment to his daughter’s well-being begs the question: how could a man like Strom Th urmond, so full of public disdain for black people, a man who built a political career out of denying the equal rights of black people, care for the black body of his daughter Essie May Washington-Williams? Th is question becomes more relevant in light of the Th urmond family’s response to Ms. WashingtonWilliams’s press conference in which she revealed perhaps the worst kept secret in South Carolina political history. While most of us would wonder why she remained silent for so long, it is worth noting that some members of Strom Th urmond’s family carried on as if Mrs. Washington-Williams had done something wrong in breaking her near sixty-year silence. Jeff rey Gettleman, in his article “Th urmond Family Struggles with a Diffi cult Truth,” cites several members of the Th urmond family as fi ghting to come to terms with the revelation of Th urmond’s interracial intimacy. One family member, Ms. Mary T. Th ompkins Freeman, who is Th urmond’s niece, went so far as to say that this (read: black illegitimate daughter) was a “blight on the family.”2
