When the other girls at S.C. State College were wearing bobby socks and saddle shoes, Essie Mae Washington-Williams was in hose and heels.

Friends then and now describe her as poised and charming — a class treasurer who married a member of S.C. State’s first law school class.

“She seemed a little more mature than the rest of us,” said Thelma Little of Brooklyn, N.Y., S.C. State class of 1947.

She was private. She did not gossip.

She now says she had a secret.

It was widely rumored that the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, white and an ardent segregationist, had a biracial? daughter.

It also was widely rumored that the daughter was Williams, but she never acknowledged it, and even close friends and neighbors didn’t ask.

Her children and grandchildren say they have known for “a while” now.

“But like her, we’ve kept quiet for the most part,” said Dr. Ronald James Williams, her son. “It was best overall for everybody.”

But today, at an 11 a.m. press conference at the Adam’s Mark hotel in downtown Columbia, Williams will tell her story.

At age 78, she is Thurmond’s oldest child, a claim his family acknowledged Monday.

Williams says she is telling her story out of duty to history and out of respect for her own family, so they will know their heritage.

She has friends in South Carolina, where she was born and where she went to college. Some, like Lewie Roache, may come to today’s press conference.

“I’d love to see Essie,” said Roache, a classmate who later became dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at S.C. State.

QUIET AND RESERVED

Williams lives now in Los Angeles, where she taught school until she retired.

Her friends here and there are protective of her. When asked about her, their responses follow two lines:

She is a quiet and reserved woman, who is setting the record straight.

And she is no different from thousands of other blacks with white fathers, who have carried their secrets for too long.

“Why all the hullabaloo about Essie?” asked Thelma Little, a friend and a 1947 graduate of S.C. State. “Everybody’s going on, like they don’t believe it. Well, why not?”

White men have been having children by black women for centuries, she said.

“You look at African-Americans, none of them look like any of the first 20 that came off the boat,” Little said. “Some people talk about it and some don’t.”

The difference is that Williams is the daughter of perhaps the last century’s most noted segregationist. Thurmond ran for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948, when his daughter was in college.

That hypocrisy makes the story noteworthy, said another former classmate, Theodore K. Sims, class of 1948.

Sims was walking with friends at a Detroit shopping mall on Tuesday morning. He said one of the other retirees summed it up this way:

“He said, ‘Thurmond was a segregationist politically but an integrationist sexually.’ I thought that was an accurate description.”

REGULAR VISITS

Williams was born Oct. 12, 1925. Her mother, Carrie Butler, was a 16-year-old maid in the Thurmond home in Edgefield.

Strom Thurmond was a 22-year-old teacher and coach when Carrie Butler gave birth. A relative took the child to Coatesville, Pa., to be raised by family.

After graduating from high school, Williams briefly studied nursing in Harlem Hospital in New York City. She left there just after Thurmond was elected governor and enrolled in S.C. State in Orangeburg.

Thurmond began visiting the campus regularly. Students and faculty would clear out of Wilkinson Hall, which then housed the administrative offices and the library.

Thurmond would arrive in a limousine and spend 45 minutes to an hour in Wilkinson. Some students said they thought he was meeting with the president. But as the visits continued, it was rumored Thurmond was visiting his daughter.

Williams did not talk about her father. And during that time, no one would have asked.

“In 1948, you didn’t spread that rumor too much because of the political situation,” Sims said.

The state was segregated then.

Black students could not attend white schools, such as Clemson University or the University of South Carolina. On vacation, black students could not swim at Myrtle Beach. They were kept out by a rope in the ocean.

“If you floated across the rope, you could be arrested,” Sims said. “You look back and think that’s impossible, but it really happened.”

In college, Williams met Julius Williams, one of eight students in S.C. State’s first law school class.

They married and moved to Savannah in the 1950s. Julius Williams died in 1964, at 45.

‘AN INSPIRATION’

Later that year, Williams and her children — two daughters and two sons — moved to California.

They were one of the first families to integrate View Park, a Los Angeles neighborhood of palm trees, pastel bungalows and close-clipped lawns.

Williams began life anew in a city that, for tens of thousands of blacks at the time, promised steady employment and relative tolerance.

“We were the first blacks to move on to the block,” said retired probation officer Melvin Arterberry Sr. “They were the second.”

Williams still lives there today, in a soft pink stucco house. Built just after World War II, the house is located in southwest Los Angeles and would be worth about $400,000, an area real estate agent estimated.

Pink gates and window bars secure an in-ground backyard pool, long enough for a short lap. They also guard a cream-colored Lexus in the driveway. The property smells of orange trees.

It is a neighborhood of teachers and insurance salesmen, mostly African-American, seven miles from the Pacific Ocean.

There, Williams is one of the grand ladies of the community, revered as a widow who loved and provided for her children while working for the betterment of other young people.

She went back to school and earned a master’s degree in education in 1972, from the University of Southern California.

“I’ve always known her as a parent, educator and strong community member,” said Fahamisha Butler, who lives across the street and went to school with the Williams children.

“She is remarkable. She raised those children by herself. She was a teacher. I’m a teacher. I train teachers at UCLA. She was an inspiration to me.”

She is a humble inspiration though, said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a Los Angeles author and radio host whose son married one of Williams’ granddaughters.

“She’s a quiet person, a very thoughtful person, someone who thinks things through,” he said.

He also describes her as “politically aware” and “socially progressive.”

For many years, he said, she was active in a church led by the Rev. Madison Shockley, who is known for his social work.

PERSISTENT RUMORS

Like many who know Williams, Hutchinson had heard and read stories alleging that Thurmond was her father. But she never talked about it, and friends were too polite to ask.

Hutchinson said he didn’t know whether the rumors were true until last summer, when a family member told him Williams was considering a public declaration of her connection to Thurmond.

This week, he said, some blacks in Los Angeles have been critical of her for waiting so long.

“They say she should have come out and slammed the guy to expose him as a racist hypocrite.”

But those who know Williams say they understand why she held her tongue. Both she and Thurmond, for decades, denied they were father and daughter, instead calling each other “family friends.”

“He was still family,” said Hutchinson. “And she didn’t want to do anything to harm her father.”

“I could see why she couldn’t say anything; that was appropriate at the time,” said Arterberry, who has lived across the street from Williams for nearly 40 years. Arterberry never talked to her about Thurmond, though he has long believed the former senator was her father.

Perhaps something good will come of this, Roache said, if people become more aware of S.C. State University and how the state is not meeting its needs — ignoring its historically black flagship school, letting historic buildings crumble, the library go without supplies and other infrastructure fall apart.

“I hate to say it, but we still got a long way to go,” Roache said.

RIGHTING THE RECORD

In South Carolina, some black leaders hope some good will come of this, especially if mixed heritage becomes easier and more acceptable to talk about.

“It’s one of those things that aren’t talked about that really should be talked about,” said state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, D-Jasper.

Some of Thurmond’s political proteges have questioned the timing of Williams’ coming forward, since Thurmond died June 26 and cannot address her claim.

But Pinckney said it is proper to correct the record.

He credits the Thurmond children with acknowledging their half-sister. He also credits Thurmond for helping Williams financially over the years, even though they both only said they were family friends.

“He took care of his daughter. He sent her to school and he helped her,” Pinckney said. “You have to respect that.”

Reach Bauerlein at (803) 771-8485 or vbauerlein@thestate.com Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com

Staff writers Aaron Gould Sheinin and Jennifer Talhelm contributed to this report.