Clash of Thurmond's public words, private world not rare, scholars say
By Christy Oglesby
CNN
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Strom Thurmond and his eldest child, Essie Mae Washington-Williams
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The daughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, a former segregationist, said she kept her mixed-race ancestry secret to protect her father. CNN's David Mattingly reports (December 18)
A Thurmond family attorney confirms the late lawmaker fathered a child with a black housekeeper.
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ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- In the days after Strom Thurmond's firstborn publicized the open secret of her biracial lineage, what followed was a litany of sound bites rife with shock and awe.
Slack-jawed onlookers wondered how the late South Carolina senator could have fought to keep the privileges of citizenry from his own offspring. Wide-eyed readers realized the man who vowed to keep black people out of white theaters and restaurants didn't mind being close to them.
But the disclosure shouldn't have been that surprising or amazing, said scholars, politicians and experts on race, history and Southern culture.
Thurmond didn't break from his segregationist views to afford Essie Mae Washington-Williams the same treatment or inheritance afforded his three white children, they note. And the hues of African-Americans, whose ancestors arrived in this country with skin tones true to their African origins, reveal that plenty of soapbox segregationists were bedroom integrationists.
"Black people are brown, light yellow and all different colors in the United States," said Dr. Alvin Poussaint, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "White men created all the vast array of complexions and skin tones in black Americans by copulating with black women."
And Thurmond -- a male with money and might -- had the trappings that allowed Southern white men to live outside the constraints of society, said former professor Joel Williamson, author of "New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States."
"It's a thing about power and class in the South and gender and sex. Men of the upper class behaved like they wanted to behave," said Williamson, a South Carolina native who grew up watching then-judge Thurmond on the bench.
Slavery similarities
Thurmond was 22, and Washington-Williams' mother, Carrie Butler, was a 16-year-old maid for Thurmond's family when she was born. Those circumstances are reminiscent of slave owners exploiting the African-American women in bondage, Williamson and Poussaint said.
Emancipation didn't end the practice.
"Often for young men of Strom Thurmond's class, their first sexual encounter was with a black domestic," said Larry Powell, a history professor at Tulane University. "This is not very uncommon at all. .... They abused that power. It might not be rape in the physical sense, but there had to have been some element of compulsion. This woman's livelihood depended on this family."
Attorney Frank K. Wheaton, Washington-Williams' spokesman, said his client has tried to be modest and gracious in characterizing her conception.
"She is aware like most that it could have been a one-time affair, but given that her mother worked there, that is highly unlikely," Wheaton said. "It was probably an ongoing affair. She is far too modest, as most children would be about their mother. No child wants to delve into the existence of their parents' relationship."
Thurmond's later financial assistance to his daughter didn't mean he was straying from his segregationist views, scholars said.
"She was still a second-class daughter," Powell said. "She did not inherit any of his estate."
The New York Times reported when Washington-Williams visited Thurmond during his stint as governor, she was required to enter the mansion through the back door.
And the Washington Post reported that Washington-Williams received no assistance from her father before age 16. As an infant, the neighbors of her teen mother helped feed and clothe the offspring of a wealthy man, the newspaper reported.
Washington-Williams and did not lack for paternal nurture, Wheaton said
"She knew the circumstances of her presence," he said, "and with race relations what they were and ... with a loving aunt and uncle who were like her parents, she did not miss the water in her well until she came to know it."
"She grew to love her (natural) father tremendously," Wheaton said. "When he distributed his wealth (before his death), he thought of her."
Wheaton said he and his client will not disclose the amount of money Thurmond gave her.
Minding manners
Dick Harpootlian, a former Democratic chairman for South Carolina, said he loathed Thurmond's politics as did many others, but natives of the state would never publicly discuss the rumors and open secret surrounding Thurmond's eldest child.
"You know what we call it down here? We call it ugly," said Harpootlian, a Columbia, South Carolina, attorney. "We call it being ugly -- talking about it. It's manners. You don't publicize the personal weaknesses, or peccadilloes of your neighbors."
In South Carolina culture you can take into consideration being human, Harpootlian said, "and I think the rest of the country ought to also."
The support that Thurmond gave Washington-Williams after her mother introduced them in 1941 was an example of Thurmond's "doing the right thing," Harpootlian said. "He paid for her way through college and maintained a relationship with her."
As for the questions regarding whether it was a consensual conception given the teen's position and Thurmond's power, Harpootlian said that question no longer matters.
"That's something that's three-quarters of a century old, " he said. "What's the relevance of invading something that happened in the 1920s?"
Williamson, a South Carolina native, said there is a limit to following the mores of Southern manners. Being ugly "is bad manners, " he said, "but some men have no manners anyway. And they are the men at the top who have the power to exercise their bad manners."
