Disclosure About Thurmond Brings ‘a Great Sense of Peace’

Essie Mae Washington Williams, a retired Los Angeles schoolteacher who, in a newspaper article last week, said she was the mixed-race daughter of the late U.S. senator and one-time segregationist Strom Thurmond, gave her first public comments at a news conference here Tuesday, describing her disclosure as giving her “a great sense of peace.”

“I am looking for closure,” she said. “I am not bitter. I am not angry.”

Williams said she had decided to reveal her heritage at the behest of her four children and to end a secret that had become a burden over so many years: “It was only at the urging of my children and Sen. Thurmond’s passing that I decided that my children deserve to know from whom, where and what they have come. And I understand the rich history of ancestry between blacks and whites.”

Her voice occasionally wavering, she compared her story with that of Sally Hemings, the slave who is said to have borne some of Thomas Jefferson’s children, and other African Americans descended from interracial encounters that occurred at a time when such relationships were illegal.

Thurmond, at one time a strong foe of desegregation who eventually embraced integration, was governor of South Carolina from 1947 to 1951 and a U.S. senator from 1954 to 2002. He died in June.

Thurmond never admitted that Williams was anything but a friend. But his family acknowledged her Monday.

“As J. Strom Thurmond has passed away and cannot speak for himself, the Thurmond family acknowledges Ms. Essie Mae Washington Williams’ claim to her heritage,” the family’s lawyer, J. Mark Taylor, said in a brief statement.

Williams said her mother, Carrie Butler, had been 16 and Thurmond 22 when she was born in Aiken, S.C. At the time, Butler was a maid in the Thurmond household, and anti-miscegenation laws prohibited interracial relationships.

On Tuesday, Williams’ friends in South Carolina and Los Angeles said they had heard rumors about her father but had never discussed the matter with her.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, an L.A. journalist and radio personality, wrote an essay Monday disclosing that his son is married to one of Williams’ grandchildren.

“When I heard about this, I first had a reaction of disbelief and skepticism -- it was just family gossip,” he said. “But as time went on, I began to believe it. I mean, forget the DNA testing; if you look at her physically, you know it. She looks just like him, and he’s an odd-looking guy anyway.”

Eleanor Brown, 68, of South Los Angeles said she had known and served with Williams at the Church of Christian Fellowship for more than 20 years. “I knew about it,” Brown said. “I’ve known it for pretty close to 10 years. Someone at church told me. But we never talked about it. There was nothing really to talk about. My grandfather wasn’t a politician or anything, but he was also a white guy my grandmother worked for.”

Brown and other friends describe Williams as an active woman who took a leadership role at her church and with her South Carolina State University alumni association in Los Angeles.

Williams has said she went to the historically black institution in Orangeburg, S.C., at the suggestion of Thurmond. She taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 30 years before retiring in 1997. District officials, citing privacy concerns, declined to say where she taught, but her friends said she worked in adult education much of her career.

Williams’ paternity had been rumored in South Carolina for years.

Long-time officials at her alma mater and alumni recalled seeing then-Gov. Thurmond’s car on campus a number of times during her tenure at what was then South Carolina State College.

“We didn’t discuss it,” said Marianna W. Davis, a friend of Williams from college who attended Tuesday’s news conference.

“A big black limo” stood out, she said, on a black college campus in the 1940s.

Williams addressed the media a short distance from the state Capitol, which until a few years ago flew the Confederate flag and houses a bust of Thurmond. The Thurmond monument lists his career accomplishments and, at the bottom, states, “The Father of Four Children.” Above the “four,” someone has written in black ink: “five.”

Sloan reported from Columbia and Times staff writer Moore from Los Angeles.