Of course one of the biggest hypocrites contributed to this issue.
source:
usatoday
Posted 12/17/2003 12:00 PM Updated 12/18/2003 4:07 PM
Thurmond's illegitimate daughter speaks out
By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY
COLUMBIA, S.C. — She was a daughter facing life's lengthening shadows and reminiscing about a beloved father whom she dared not publicly acknowledge while he was alive.
Essie Mae Washington-Williams, 78, said Wednesday that finally being able to claim her heritage as the illegitimate child of the late senator Strom Thurmond and his family's black maid had brought her a measure of peace. (Related audio: Thurmond's daughter is glad secret is out)
"I am not bitter," Williams said at an emotional news conference in Columbia, S.C. "I am not angry. In fact, there is a great sense of peace that has come over me in the past year."
Yet because Strom Thurmond was long one of the nation's most diehard proponents of racial segregation, some historians and civil rights figures saw larger issues than a father-daughter story and a pending reunion with relatives Williams has never met.
Williams announced last week that she was the daughter that Thurmond never publicly acknowledged while he was alive. Thurmond, whose 48-year tenure in the Senate was the longest in history, died in June at 100. He had retired six months earlier.
Thurmond's family on Monday acknowledged Williams' claim. His oldest son, U.S. Attorney Strom Thurmond Jr., said he would like to meet his older half sister and start a friendship.
Williams was born in 1925 while her mother, Carrie Butler, then 16, was the maid at the Thurmond family home in Edgefield, S.C. Thurmond, who was living with his parents at the time, was 22.
Historians say this episode underlines one of the most entrenched taboos of Southern culture and highlights the different ways that blacks and whites often view their shared historical legacy.
"People have to understand that this is a part of the inheritance of slavery and segregation," says A.V. Huff, a retired historian from Furman University in South Carolina. "It was not uncommon for white slave owners to have sexual relations with women slaves, or at the end of slavery, with blacks who were in an inferior legal and economic position. It was seldom spoken of in the white community. But the oral tradition in black families kept knowledge of these types of relationships alive and well."
Williams was the subject of gossip in her native South Carolina for decades, but while Thurmond was alive, she denied that she was his daughter. She said Wednesday that she did not want to risk harming his political career.
"Throughout his life and mine, we respected each other," Williams said. "I was sensitive about his well-being and his career. I knew him beyond his public image.
"Certainly never did like the idea that he was a segregationist, but there was nothing I could do about it. That was his life."
Williams, a retired teacher who lives in Los Angeles, offered some historical perspective of her own.
"There are many stories like Sally Hemings' and mine," she said, referring to Thomas Jefferson's relationship with one of his black slaves. "The unfortunate measure is that not everyone knows about these stories that helped to make America what it is today."
Huff, a native South Carolinian, says he remembers hearing stories about several white fathers of black children when he was a teenager in Columbia in the early 1950s. One of those stories was about Thurmond and his daughter.
"A lot of people knew this," he says. "It just was not something that was widely printed or spoken of."
Huff says Williams' revelations are not likely to damage Thurmond's legacy because many South Carolinians already had heard rumors about her and because his family has accepted her claims.
The age of consent for sexual relations in South Carolina in the 1920s was 14. But that would have been just an irrelevant technicality, says historian Valinda Littlefield, a University of South Carolina professor specializing in Southern black history. "You're talking about a 15- or early-16-year-old maid," she says. "What choice does she have? This is a child, basically."
When Williams' claims were disclosed last weekend, some South Carolinians rushed to attack her and to defend Thurmond.
"Americans need to realize that we have a very complex history, and we need to quit lying to ourselves about what did and did not happen," Littlefield says.
Armstrong Williams, a black columnist and commentator who was a protégé of Thurmond, disputes parallels between Thurmond and Jefferson. "I've never seen any evidence that Jefferson took care of his children," says Armstrong, who calls the late senator "my hero." "I know Strom was there for his daughter. He was willing to risk it all. He would get in his car as governor and go to that campus to see his daughter."
Thurmond first met with his daughter when she was 16, encouraged her to attend South Carolina State College, where he visited her while governor, and sent her money until she got married. After her husband died at age 45, the payments resumed.
After decades as a governor and senator, Thurmond moderated his views on race relations. He eventually dropped his opposition to the Voting Rights Act and supported a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.
But this week's disclosure was seen as confirmation to some that he had not truly changed at all.
"He was a racist by day and a hypocrite by night," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King. "It's hypocrisy at its worst." Had Thurmond truly changed, Lowery said, he would have acknowledged his daughter during his lifetime.
Contributing: The Associated Press, The Greenville (S.C.) News
http://www.rbvincent.com/std.htm
Black folk are not the only ones doing it!
