Thus Williams, 78, proclaimed her heritage Wednesday as the daughter of a black woman and the white former segregationist who became the nation's longest-serving U.S. senator. Under the bright lights set up by television news crews from all over the South, Williams appeared to be a walnut-complexioned likeness of the man she had just identified as her father.

Her remarks at the news conference were brief. She said she was born in Aiken on Oct. 12, 1925. Her mother, Carrie Butler, was a maid who worked in the home of Thurmond's parents. Williams was raised by an aunt in Pennsylvania. She said her birth mother introduced her to her birth father when she was a teenager. She is considering offers from publishers to write a book about her life.

After Williams' remarks, her attorney, Frank Wheaton, announced that Thurmond's white children had acknowledged his client's claim and were eager to meet their half-sister.

Williams reiterated that she has no interest in sharing the deceased senator's estate. She said she came forward because her four children, 13 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren should know that their "lives have meaning and importance in American history."

Their history, she said, is as significant as that of Sally Hemings, the Virginia slave who shared children with Thomas Jefferson. Millions of mixed-race children were born during slavery and segregation and lived the black experience without knowing their white fathers, historians say.

"This is something I'm quite concerned about," Williams said. "These are the stories you haven't heard about. I think we're hearing it now because of the prominence of Strom Thurmond."

Thurmond, who in 1948 ran for the presidency on a segregationist platform, died in June at age 100 without acknowledging publicly that he had fathered a child with Butler, though speculation on that possibility had been part of South Carolina political lore for decades. Williams' parentage was disclosed Sunday in The Washington Post.

An audience of about 220 black and white South Carolinians applauded Williams for speaking out and for inspiring a moment that some said could improve race relations not only in their deep south state but others such as Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia.

"The most important thing to me is what it means in terms of tearing away the veil of secrecy shrouding these types of relationships," said Jack Best, a South Carolina historian and author who is white. "Across the South, many black people are aware of their white ancestry, even though they don't know the parents. But white people never talk about it. White people are going to be stunned by the emotional content of this."

Cleveland Sellers, the black director of the African American Studies department at the University of South Carolina, said: "This is much larger than Essie Mae Washington-Williams. There are a whole lot of folk who've been denied their heritage and history. We need this type of truth and reconciliation."

Throughout their lives, Williams said, she met secretly with her father at his offices in Columbia, when he was South Carolina's governor, and in Washington, when he was a senator.

Armstrong Williams, a former aide to Thurmond who is unrelated to Essie Mae Washington-Williams, said the senator spoke to him often about his daughter.

Once, during a National Urban League awards ceremony where Thurmond was honored, Williams said, the senator leaned toward him and said, "'You know, I have ties in the black community.' And I said, really? And he winked at me.

"He said, 'She won't talk about it in my lifetime, and I won't talk about it.' And he winked at me again," Williams said.