"As J. Strom Thurmond has passed away and cannot speak for himself, the Thurmond family acknowledges Ms. Essie Mae Washington-Williams' claim to her heritage," the family said in a message distributed to newsrooms around the state. "We hope this acknowledgment will bring closure for Ms. Williams."

He said the Thurmond family wants to acknowledge Williams' claim and put an end to the controversy. "The outcome we're trying for is finality and closure."

Although Williams' attorney, Glenn Walters, hadn't spoken with the Thurmonds on Monday, he said the announcement was clear in its intent, and "the right thing to do. They (the Thurmonds) are good people," he told The Post and Courier.

Some said the note appears to have been written as vaguely as possible, so that it could be interpreted as the family merely recognizing that Washington-Williams made a claim to be a blood relative of their father, who died in June at age 100, without committing to anything.

Thurmond's widow, Nancy Moore, did not return a phone call seeking comment. Thurmond family spokesman Mark Taylor, counsel to the Thurmond estate, issued the statement.

The note was released in advance of a news conference that Washington-Williams, 78, scheduled to be held in Columbia on Wednesday. Her lawyers have said she plans to detail her relationship with Thurmond, who had supported her financially as far back as 1941.

However, late Monday, following the release of the note and Thurmond Jr.'s comments, it was unclear if the news conference would be held.

One of Washington-Williams' sons, Dr. Ronald Williams of Onalaska, Wash., told The State that his mother was being interviewed by the TV newsmagazine "60 Minutes II" in New York on Monday. In light of the Thurmond family's statement, Williams said, he will advise his mother "that, in good faith, it will probably be a good idea" not to hold the news conference, but rather to meet privately with the Thurmond family.

Washington-Williams broke a lifelong silence when she said in a weekend Washington Post story that she is a child from Thurmond's relationship with her mother, who reportedly was a 16-year-old housekeeper in his parents' Edgefield home.

Walters said contact between her representatives and the family has been minimal in the six months since Thurmond died. Her camp sent a letter, and Thurmond family sent her a copy of his will, Walters said.

Thurmond Jr. said any question about whether Williams has a right to money from his father's estate "is a matter for the estate."

Washington-Williams has long been rumored to be Thurmond's child, although both she and Thurmond previously denied it, describing their relationship as that of friends. She came forward now at the urging of her family.

South Carolina law says surviving children are not automatically entitled to a share of a deceased parent's estate. As long as the will is valid, Thurmond Sr.'s wishes must be followed.

"I have no intention to alter my father's wishes," Thurmond Jr. told The State. "His will is the controlling document."

Syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams, who worked for and was a longtime friend of the late senator, said the Thurmond family is doing the right thing.

"With them acknowledging it, they've shown respect to her," said Armstrong Williams, who is not related to Essie Mae Washington-Williams.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was in the Lowcountry on Monday preparing to lead a march of protest over a controversial drug raid at Goose Creek high school and the shooting of a black man by police in North Charleston, told The Post and Courier that Washington-Williams deserves recognition and financial compensation by the surviving family.

"He lived 100 years and denied his daughter's existence. He fought to pass laws to keep his daughter in racial segregation. He never allowed her to eat at his table. Other members of the family ought to volunteer to include her in his estate. It's a classic case of Southern hypocrisy," he said.

Reaction has been mixed among South Carolina residents, with many saying it was long understood that Thurmond had fathered a child with a black woman. Some of his supporters say it shouldn't detract from his years of public service.

But Dan Carter, a history professor at the University of South Carolina, said that while many people may look at this as one more story in the former senator's repertoire, he cautioned against it.

"Some might treat it like it is one more little episode in the humorous and irrepressible Strom story that you hear all the time. I think it is a lot more serious than that," he said. "It trivializes what is a pretty dark part of our past and lets us gloss over what we should be remembering."

Thurmond biographer Jack Bass said it is also important to remember that family members near and far on both sides are being affected by what has become a public airing of a previously private matter. "For all of them, the families on both sides, they face a somewhat difficult period of adjustment," he said.

Bass, a professor at the College of Charleston, said that if the woman's claim is true, it could help people of both races grapple with a very difficult subject in old Southern society, that of mixed-race children having been fathered by white males and then hushed away.

"The Thurmond relationship does have some parallels with Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings," he said. "But it also has a lot of parallels in Southern history. This may break a silence over these family relations."

How Thurmond was able to move around as an arch-segregationist politician through several elections while at the same time having possibly fathered a black child was probably easy for him, Bass said. "I think Sen. Thurmond had a capacity to compartmentalize different parts of his life. I think that this was in a different compartment for him."

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