Edition: U.S. / Global

The Nation: Strom Thurmond's Child; Old Times There Are Not Forgotten

Published: December 21, 2003


But that was how Essie Mae Washington-Williams's mother, Carrie Butler, was employed when she and a young Strom Thurmond, the scion of a powerful white family, had what Mrs. Williams described as ''an affair.''



''White men were king,'' said Valinda Littlefield, a professor of African-American history at the University of South Carolina. ''She was basically a child. He can do with her what he wants. She's more or less the family's slave.''


''There was this uncontrollable, unconscious attraction to the otherness of black people,'' said Edward Ball, author of the memoir, ''Slaves in the Family'' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998). ''I believe there was a little Strom Thurmond lurking in many white men's hearts.''



''Everybody knew this was going on,'' said Jack Bass, co-author of ''Ol Strom'' (Atlanta: Longstreet, 1999), a biography of Mr. Thurmond. ''But what was talked about was the number of mulatto children on the next plantation, not those on your own.''

There was another reason for the silence. The law. Often these ''affairs'' were illegal, under a number of provisions. And had Mr. Thurmond been caught and prosecuted, history might have been a little different. In 1925, a man convicted of illicit sex could have lost his right to vote -- and hold office.

Shortly after Carrie Butler gave birth to his child, Mr. Thurmond began his political career as school superintendent, going on to become state senator, governor, a candidate for president in 1948 and then the longest-serving United States senator in history (48 years).

He is best known for his fiery segregationist speeches of 1948, when he said things like ''all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes,'' though much later in life he became a supporter of civil rights. Mr. Thurmond died in June at 100.

In 1925, he could have been prosecuted for ''fornication,'' described as extramarital sex and punishable by a fine of at least $100. And if Carrie Butler was 15 when they had sex (she was 16 when the baby was born), Mr. Thurmond could have been tried for ''carnal knowledge of a woman child,'' though scholars said no Jim Crow jury would have convicted him. Members of Mrs. Williams's family have said they don't know how old her mother was when she and Mr. Thurmond became intimate.

''This was not a love affair,'' said Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a South Carolina state representative. ''The man was 22 years old and the girl was probably 15 at conception. We are arresting people these days for that kind of thing. So I think it was a matter of power and control, not romance, and those issues need to be looked at, need to be a part of this discussion. I don't want that 15-year-old girl, Mrs.Butler, to be forgotten in all this.''

There were also miscegenation laws, though those applied more to interracial marriage than sex.

What is so curious about the episode is that despite the enormous social barriers between Mr. Thurmond and his half-white, half-black daughter, he maintained a relationship with her for years -- even while electrifying crowds with his talk of racial separateness.

Mrs. Williams's mother died at age 38 of kidney failure, her short, hard life a universe away from a man who become one of the South's most powerful and emblematic figures.

And Mrs. Williams, who is now entertaining a sheaf of movie and book deals about her secret life, remembers her mother as ''a tall and beautiful woman, who always said my father was a very nice man.''

Photo: The young Strom Thurmond, then a teacher. (Photo by Strom Thurmond Collection at Clemson University)