A Los Angeles woman’s claim that she is the late Strom Thurmond’s illegitimate daughter is an uncalled-for personal attack, some of the senator’s friends and associates said Saturday.

But other S.C. politicians and historians said Essie Mae Washington-Williams’ story shouldn’t be a surprise. Many people, black and white, have whispered about Thurmond’s rumored illegitimate daughter for decades.

All agree that the news is unlikely to alter Thurmond’s legacy as a masterful constituent servant, a one-time segregationist and a lady’s man. Thurmond died June 26 at age 100.

“To those people who find him unappealing, this will just add to it,” Thurmond biographer Nadine Cohodas said. “And those who like him will say, ‘It’s just ol’ Strom.’ To other people, more detached observers, it’s just ... another piece of evidence that he was a man of his time.”

Williams, 78, who attended S.C. State University, went public Saturday in a Washington Post story and plans to hold a news conference Wednesday in Columbia. She has said she would submit to a DNA test if her story is challenged.

“Essie Mae has proven what was not documented but what was widely believed,” said College of Charleston professor Jack Bass, who wrote of rumors about Williams her in the unauthorized Thurmond biography, Ol’ Strom. Bass wrote that book with the Washington Post’s Marilyn Thompson.

“The part that’s new — that’s really new — is Essie Mae Williams’ decision to come forward with her story and further details about their personal relationship,” Bass said.

But U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., who worked as a page in Thurmond’s office, and state Sen. John Courson, R-Richland, said they doubt Williams’ story.

“I don’t give a lot of credence to the Washington Post, one,” said Courson, a Thurmond family friend and political protege. “Second, I have never heard of any of this from the senator or anyone. This is ludicrous. It is absolutely bizarre.”

Even if her story is true, Williams should have kept the relationship quiet, Wilson said.

“It’s 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,” Wilson said.

HIGHLIGHTING HYPOCRISY?

USC history professor Dan Carter said Thurmond’s relationship with Williams has been common knowledge since at least the 1960s.

There is evidence Thurmond supported Williams financially and that he arranged for her to attend S.C. State.

Fred Fortune, who graduated from S.C. State in 1950, said he remembers seeing Thurmond on campus two or three times a year.

The visits were not secret. Thurmond would arrive in his limo, park in front of the library on campus and meet with Williams on the second floor for about 30 minutes, said Fortune, a retired engineer living in Skokie, Ill.

While there was no official acknowledgment of Thurmond’s visits, Fortune said, it was common knowledge among the student body.

“We would sit there and watch,” he said. “This went on the full time she was there.”

USC historian Carter said many blacks and whites likely see Williams’ story from different perspectives.

Williams’ mother was black. And while it was not common in the early 1900s for a white man to have a sexual relationship with a black woman, it wasn’t unheard of, Carter said.

Blacks historically have been open to believing stories like Williams’, he said, but whites have resisted.

“It runs contrary to the idea that the races should be separate,” he said. Whites “didn’t want to accept the reality of the relationship between blacks and whites.”

Because Thurmond was a segregationist, Carter said, Williams’ story “highlights the hypocrisy of Strom Thurmond, but it also highlights the hypocrisy of the whole society.”

DIMINISHING A HERO?

Wilson said it is unfair to debate rumors about Thurmond when he can no longer defend himself.

The same goes for discussion of an affair Thomas Jefferson is said to have had with a slave.

“Sometimes these things just go on,” Wilson said. “These are heroes of mine. I really hope these would be heroes to future generations of Americans. (The stories) are ... a way to diminish their contributions to our country’s existence.”

But the Rev. Joe Darby and others said Saturday they hope Williams’ story leads to a conversation among South Carolinians about the historical relationship between blacks and whites.

“I just find it to be an irony that while (Thurmond) was one of the people talking about separation of the races ... that he had an intimate relationship with one of those people,” said Darby, vice president of the state NAACP.

“It’s one of the things the South needs to face up to.”

Reach Talhelm at (803) 771-8339 or jtalhelm@thestate.com. Staff writers Ben Werner and Chuck Crumbo contributed to this report.