Strom Thurmond’s daughter has died. Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the mixed-race daughter of former segregationist Senator Thurmond, was 87.
Washington-Williams, who kept her parentage a secret for more than 70 years, passed away on Sunday . Her death was confirmed by Vann Dozier of Leevy’s Funeral Home in Columbia. A cause of death has not yet been declared.
As the daughter of Strom Thurmond and his family’s black maid, Washington-Williams’ identity was the subject of gossip in political circles and the black community for several decades. After Thurmond’s death in 2003, Washington-Williams came forward and revealed that her father was the white man who once ran for president on a segregationist platform.
While announcing her identity as Strom Thurmond’s daughter at a dedicated press conference in 2003, Washington-Williams said:
“I am Essie Mae Washington-Williams, and at last I am completely free.”
When pressed on why she had remained silent about her father, who served in the US Senate for more than 47 years, Washington-Williams said:
“He trusted me, and I respected him.”
Although Thurmond had always avoided publicly acknowledging his daughter, his family verified her claim after she came forward.
Essie Mae Washington-Williams was born in 1925, the result of an affair between Thurmond, then 22, and a 16-year-old black maid who worked in his family’s South Carolina home. Strom Thurmond later ran for president as a segregationist for the Dixiecrat Party in 1948, defiantly declaring:
“All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the army cannot force the Negro race into our theaters, our swimming pools, our schools, our churches, our homes.”
In a previous interview, Washington-Williams remembered once asking her father about his views on race. She revealed Thurmond argued his beliefs were part of the “culture and custom of the South.”
