{"id":28036,"date":"2013-02-05T19:41:08","date_gmt":"2013-02-05T19:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=28036"},"modified":"2013-02-05T23:44:21","modified_gmt":"2013-02-05T23:44:21","slug":"essie-mae-washington-williams-dies-at-87-black-daughter-of-segregationist-strom-thurmond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=28036","title":{"rendered":"Essie Mae Washington-Williams dies at 87; black daughter of segregationist Strom Thurmond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Essie Mae Washington-Williams dies at 87; black daughter of segregationist Strom Thurmond<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Times<\/a>
\n2013-02-04<\/p>\n

Elaine Woo<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2003 the retired L.A. schoolteacher unburdened herself of a secret: Her father was Sen. Strom Thurmond<\/a>, the legendary South Carolina<\/a> politician who had built a career as a champion of segregation.<\/em><\/p>\n

A week before Christmas in 2003, a retired Los Angeles schoolteacher stood before a phalanx of news cameras and 250 reporters in a South Carolina ballroom and declared, “I am Essie Mae Washington-Williams<\/a>, and at last I am completely free.”
\n\u00a0
\nAfter more than 60 years, Washington-Williams had chosen to unburden herself of a secret: that she, a black woman, had been fathered by a white man \u2014 Sen. Strom Thurmond, the legendary South Carolina politician who had built a long Washington career as a champion of segregation.
\n<\/strong>\u00a0
\nThurmond had died five months earlier at age 100, having never acknowledged that his liaison with a family maid when he was 22 had produced a daughter. At 78, Washington-Williams decided she owed it to history to speak up.<\/p>\n

“My children ultimately convinced me that history needed to know about Thurmond and that I should set the record straight,” she wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2003<\/a>. “I am not doing this for money. I am not suing his estate. I just want to tell the truth.”
\n\u00a0
\nWashington-Williams, 87, died Monday of natural causes in Columbia, S.C., said her attorney, Frank K. Wheaton. After more than 40 years in Los Angeles, she moved back to South Carolina a few years ago when her health began to deteriorate…<\/p>\n

Read the entire obituary here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Essie Mae Washington-Williams dies at 87; black daughter of segregationist Strom Thurmond The Los Angeles Times 2013-02-04 Elaine Woo In 2003 the retired L.A. schoolteacher unburdened herself of a secret: Her father was Sen. Strom Thurmond, the legendary South Carolina politician who had built a career as a champion of segregation. A week before Christmas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,8,26,20,25],"tags":[13566,6733,2056,3909,2055,13272],"class_list":["post-28036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","category-women","tag-elaine-woo","tag-essie-mae-washington","tag-essie-mae-washington-williams","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-strom-thurmond","tag-the-los-angeles-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}