COLUMBIA - Strom Thurmond's family said Monday that it "acknowledges" the claim by a retired Los Angeles schoolteacher that she is his mixed-raced daughter.

"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. We hope this acknowledgment will bring closure for Ms. Williams," said a statement released by the family's lawyer, Mark Taylor.

Taylor refused to say whether the family was in fact verifying Williams' claim that Thurmond, once the champion of Southern white resistance to civil rights, was her father.

But Williams' two attorneys said they and their client took the statement as an admission of Thurmond's paternity.

"We are happy that this matter has been resolved," said attorney Glenn Walters of Orangeburg. He said Williams, 78, "can now take a place in history as a daughter of U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond."

Frank Wheaton, Williams' lawyer in Los Angeles, said she was grateful to the Thurmond family. He said Williams "shed a sigh of relief. She said, `I'm happy and very much surprised.' "

Williams was to discuss her story at a news conference Wednesday in Columbia. Wheaton said that in light of the Thurmond family's acknowledgment, there may be no need for her to release all the evidence she said she has to support her claim. She also said she was ready to submit to DNA tests if challenged by the Thurmond family.

Earlier, Wheaton had said Williams would go to court if the Thurmond family refused to admit she is their kin. He said Williams wasn't making a claim against Thurmond's estate, valued in his will at $200,000. He bequeathed most of it to his three children by his estranged wife, Nancy Moore Thurmond.

The will won't become final until next October, a year after it was filed. The assets will be distributed then.

Even if all parties agree that Williams is, in fact, Thurmond's daughter, she isn't automatically entitled to a share of his estate.

Thurmond died in June at age 100 after having served 48 years as a U.S. senator, longer than anyone else in history.

Although Williams had for decades been the subject of widespread speculation that she was Thurmond's daughter, she always denied it, saying instead that he was merely an old family friend. Her mother, Carrie Butler, had been Thurmond's parents' black teenage maid. When Thurmond was asked about the story, he said the allegation was "too unseemly" to warrant comment.

But in an interview last week with The Washington Post, Williams said Thurmond had told her he was her father and had helped her financially since she was 16.

She said she had protected Thurmond during his lifetime because of their mutual "deep respect" and her wish not to harm his political career.

With his death, she said, she began to realize that her story is part of history, and that she should reveal it before she died.

"African Americans should hear it," she said. "Everybody should hear it. They deserve to know the details."

The family's acknowledgement Monday came in contrast to initial reaction to Williams' claim by people close to Thurmond. The story appeared Sunday in The Washington Post and was widely reprinted in S.C. newspapers. State Sen. John Courson, R-Richland, a longtime Thurmond family friend, called the story "ludicrous ... absolutely bizarre."

U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson said that even if Williams' story were true, she should have kept the relationship quiet. He said publishing Williams' claim was "a smear on the image that (Thurmond) has as a person of high integrity who has been so loyal to the people of South Carolina."

University of South Carolina history professor Dan Carter said Thurmond's relationship with Williams has been common knowledge since at least the 1960s. Because Thurmond was a segregationist, Carter said, "Williams' story highlights the hypocrisy of Strom Thurmond, but it also highlights the hypocrisy of the whole (Southern) society."