Thurmond story reflects times, historians say

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Acknowledgment Monday by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond's family that the claim of a 78-year-old Los Angeles woman that he was her father is true raised anew one of the South's dirty little secrets: Powerful white men, impoverished black women, mixed race children, historians said.

Furman University historian A.V. Huff said the issue isn't widely written about, but is an indelible part of the region's history.

While native-born Southerners of a certain age are familiar with such situations, some young people and newcomers may not be, Huff said.

In that case, "they just have to learn a little Southern history."

Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a retired teacher whose mother was the Thurmond family maid in their Edgefield home when she was born in 1925, said in an article in Sunday's Washington Post that she is Thurmond's daughter and wanted to set the historical record straight. The once strongly segregationist senator died in June at age 100, six months after leaving office.

During Thurmond's lifetime, Washington-Williams had said she was not his daughter. The allegation surfaced periodically in books and news articles, fed in part by Thurmond's visits to the woman when he was governor after World War II and she was a student he was financially supporting at South Carolina State University.

Legacy untarnished?

It is unlikely to tarnish Thurmond's legacy among South Carolinians, historians said Tuesday.

Beyond the state's borders may be another matter.

Roger Wilkins, a professor at Virginia's George Mason University, said that beyond South Carolina, Thurmond is seen as an enfeebled old man who stayed too long on the job, ran a segregationist campaign for president in 1948 and holds the record for the longest filibuster ever — against civil rights legislation.

Fathering a child by a black woman would reaffirm Thurmond's "terrible sexual hypocrisy" and simultaneously reopen examination of an early 20th century era when "not much had changed since slavery, said Wilkins, an assistant U.S. attorney general in the Johnson administration and former New York Times and Washington Post editorial writer.

"The color we are comes primarily from white men who had extraordinary power over black women during slavery and after and used that power," Wilkins said. "Most of us know our African ancestors did not come here the color we are."

Some members of the state's Legislative Black Caucus defended Thurmond. Among them, Sen. Kay Patterson, D-Columbia, who called it "boring ... old news."

Decades of rumors, combined with the Thurmond family's acknowledgment of Washington-Williams' claims, mitigate any negative impact on Thurmond's legacy among South Carolinians, said Huff and Bernard Powers, a College of Charleston historian.

"There has been so much public acknowledgment of miscegenation today that it is just not that big a deal anymore," Powers said.

The disclosure won't and shouldn't affect how Thurmond is remembered, Huff said.

Not unique

After slavery was instituted in the 1600s, mixed-race children were commonplace on the South's plantations.

James Hammond, a plantation owner and the state's 1842-44 governor, had several slave children who were identified in his will and provided for, Huff said.

Mary Boykin Chestnut, whose diary captures life in pre- and post-Civil War South Carolina, wrote voluminously of white masters, slave women and plantation wives who looked the other way.

Jack Bass, co-author of "Ol Strom," an unauthorized Thurmond biography that included a section on Washington-Williams, said he doubted any adverse impact on the senator's legacy because "the people who loved Strom are still going to love him, and the people who don't are going to say, 'This is what I thought all along.' "

The benefit, he said, is that "it breaks the code of silence about a pattern that's been around."

Bass, a former journalist who is now a professor of humanities and social sciences at the College of Charleston, said some people can say Thurmond was a hypocrite for playing the segregationist role in past decades while having a mixed-race child, "but it's bigger in terms of the whole culture being hypocritical, and he was part of that culture. The fact that he provided the degree of support for her that he did, including the cover story, goes far beyond what most white men in similar circumstances would have done."

Different era

Powers said that from a historical perspective, mid-1920s South Carolina was culturally much closer to the South's antebellum period than the current era is to the mid-1920s.

"The thing that is so consistent between antebellum America and 1920s America is continued disparate power relationships between blacks and whites," he said. "In this situation, you have the mother working for the Thurmond family as a domestic, a subordinate, and in that situation, what does a sexual relationship between Strom Thurmond and this black woman mean?"

Continuing, rhetorically, Powers asked, "was it coerced? Was it consensual? But even if you tried to say it was consensual, it would be in Edgefield County in the 1920s (with a woman) in a subordinate position working for the Thurmond family, and in that sense, there's a real continuity going back to antebellum America where you had romantic relationships between white men and black women slaves.

"Can we really appreciate what it means to have a consensual relationship in the context of that time period? Consensual might have meant something really different from what we think of consensual today because of the tremendous disparity in power, an aspect today that people will have little appreciation for," Powers said.

'Zero' damage

Patterson, a pioneer civil rights leader, predicted "zero" damage to Thurmond's legacy.

"Strom was Strom, and I respected and admired him before this, which I knew all along, and I admire and respect him afterwards. It's not going to change anything. Most all politicians, and most all white men, went with black women back then in that time and, hell, they're still doing it. Y'all been doing that since before sliced bread."

"What's new about that, and who gives a damn?"

To state Rep. Fletcher Smith, D-Greenville, "In one sense, people will remember Thurmond positively because he did take care of his daughter to make sure she got educated; the other thing is that probably his public persona wasn't indicative of his private persona. As a result of that, I can't really consider him a big racist (because) his private conduct indicates he looked toward his (mixed-race) daughter as equal to his other family. That's a big step for someone coming from a segregation background."

Smith said that when Thurmond's younger son, Paul, worked in the Statehouse, "I found him to be very progressive on the race issue. Evidently (Strom Sr.) never taught his children to be racists."

Dan Hoover covers politics and can be reached at 298-448.