The recent reports that Strom Thurmond fathered a child 78 years ago with a young black woman who worked in his family home will undoubtedly resound for months.

Unlike some, I won’t voice surprise or celebration because this news, in a general sense, has been known or suspected by many for decades. I first heard it some 30 years ago.

Now that I know the facts, however, I am feeling great pain.

The Thurmond family does not contest Essie Mae Washington-Williams’ claims that when Thurmond was a young man he had sexual relations with Carrie Butler, over whom his family exercised great influence, if not control. That, alone, is upsetting.

Why should I or anyone else be upset by this? Mrs. Williams has told the world the late senator was kind to her and provided her with financial support until his last days.

Besides, some might argue, we have no direct knowledge of what went on between Thurmond and Carrie Butler. And Mrs. Williams, the other surviving Thurmonds and the town of Edgefield, according to reports, seem to have made peace with it, confident the legendary senator’s legacy is secure.

While this is true, reasonable people — whatever their race — would likely view whatever happened between the son of the master of the house, for lack of a better expression, and the young maid working there as horribly imbalanced. And it’s that imbalance that is most important here.

Seventy-eight years ago, when Mrs. Williams was born, racist laws enacted and enforced by the powerful in South Carolina — and throughout the South — had secured the position of propertied whites, and rendered blacks socially and politically negligible.

We had the worst jobs, attended the worst schools and were routinely blocked from voting. The Brown decision was 29 years away, and the Civil Rights Act 10 years after that.

We were terrorized by the Klan and undermined by white citizens councils. Social interactions between blacks and whites were forbidden.

Black men were unjustly jailed or lynched after being accused of making untoward remarks to or assaulting white women. That was the Jim Crow South in 1925.

And yet, the man who would become a leading spokesman for Jim Crow had, on at least one occasion, sexual relations with a black woman employed by his family.

Why would he do this? Why would she consent? Did she have a choice? How did he live for so long and not tell even his family, according to reports, what he had done?

That these questions have yet to be answered causes me some frustration, but there is something else.

And it’s not that some folks say this was a private matter and the paper has blown it out of proportion. This is the nation’s story because Thurmond made very clear his public position on race-mixing during his terms as governor and U.S. senator. The media has rightly probed the riddle, if not hypocrisy, of the senator’s public and private lives.

And it’s not that people say because the Thurmond family acknowledges Mrs. Williams as the senator’s oldest daughter the matter has been put to rest, not when there is already talk of a Hollywood rendering of this tale.

No, when all has been said and the celebration is done, one sobering, painful fact will remain.

Carrie Butler was 16, poor and black, and Strom Thurmond was 22, wealthy and white.

And I, for one, find little to celebrate in that.

Mr. Wiggins teaches media writing at the University of South Carolina.