More Thurmond Letters
Posted on Sun, Sep. 12, 2004
More Thurmond letters foundSenator's notes with biracial daughter in files
By John Monk and Eileen WaddellKnight Ridder
But, for all their careful, businesslike tone, the letters also show Strom Thurmond took an interest in Essie Mae Washington Williams' life and the lives of her children, his grandchildren.
COLUMBIA - Handwritten on pink stationery, the April 29, 1946, letter is brief: a note from a young person to a politician she knows.
"Judge Thurmond:
I wish to let you know that I received the telegram. Thank you very much.
I'm getting along as well as ever. School is fine, finals will be this month. I haven't heard anymore from A&M about my acceptance as yet. I hope to as soon as possible. I will let you know when I do. Until then, I am
Sincerely yours, Essie Mae"
That 58-year-old letter is the first known written link between the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond and his long-secret biracial daughter, Essie Mae Washington Williams.
The newly discovered letter, along with some two dozen other new letters and records that connect Thurmond, who died June 26, 2003, and Williams, now 78, was found in Thurmond's archives at Clemson University.
Reporters from The (Columbia) State uncovered the records, most from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, in those archives, which contain about 8 million pages of the late senator's letters and other documents.
The new documents, along with half a dozen or so previously known letters, provide the most detailed portrait to date of how Thurmond, South Carolina's most powerful politician of the 20th century, led two lives.
Publicly, Thurmond was a segregationist, opposing any mixing of races. Privately, he had a child with a black woman and kept in touch with their child for decades.
The letters between Williams and Thurmond were worded carefully.
These were more or less business letters, Williams said in an interview. "There was never anything personal in it. Of course, my reasoning behind that was, in case anybody opened the letter, there wouldn't have been anything there for them to get from it."
Early in his 48-year Senate career, Thurmond instructed Williams to write "very personal" on the outside of envelopes of her letters to him. Staffers put letters with that notation on his desk unopened, he wrote Williams.
But, for all their careful, businesslike tone, the letters also show Thurmond took an interest in Williams' life and the lives of her children, his grandchildren.
The records show:
The earliest known letter between Thurmond and Williams was in April 1946.
Thurmond started making Williams loans the next year.
Initially, Thurmond had her sign promissory notes. But later he stopped that practice, making it clear the cash was a gift.
Thurmond apologized that he and his wife, Nancy Moore Thurmond, were not able to attend the Los Angeles high-school graduations of two of his granddaughters, Monica and Wanda, in the early 1970s.
Thurmond tried to help Williams get a mid-level federal job in 1973.
Without acknowledging their relationship, Thurmond tried to help his grandson, Ronald Williams, get into the University of South Carolina medical school and Charleston's Medical University of South Carolina in 1975.
Thurmond tried to help Essie Mae Washington Williams save the Army job of one of her friends in 1975.
Thurmond and Williams or her children met at least half a dozen times in his U.S. Senate office in Washington, according to his office calendars. The last known visit, between Thurmond and granddaughter Wanda Terry, was in June 2002.
Dan Carter, a nationally known University of South Carolina historian, said, "The State's discoveries are valuable because they help document Thurmond's bizarre double life of maintaining contact with someone who is your flesh and blood, important to a Southerner, yet at the same time managing to separate that completely from your politics."
By having a child with a black woman, Thurmond violated taboos on interracial sex, Carter said. At the same time, he was a leading segregationist.
Williams had not expected more records of her communications with Thurmond to be found, she said. Previously, only a handful had been turned up by The Washington Post and writers of a 1998 Thurmond biography, "Ol' Strom."
"That really surprises me, because as secretive as he was, we never said anything about being secret, it was just kind of understood. I'm surprised he would keep all that," said Williams, who lives in Los Angeles and is working on a book about her relationship with her father.
The new records include Father's Day, Christmas and birthday cards from Williams to Thurmond. They also reveal Thurmond's efforts to help Williams and her family.
During much of that time, Thurmond worked to deny blacks the right to vote and equal access to jobs, schools, housing and public facilities.
After 1970, faced with an increasing number of black voters, Thurmond became a racial moderate. But he kept his daughter's existence secret.
For all the thousands of people he knew, Williams says there may have been no one with whom her father could share his secret. She said he never apologized for his segregationist stands.
"He didn't believe in apologies," Williams said. "That is one of the things he was criticized for. Even the guy in Alabama, [former Gov. George] Wallace, remember him? He came out and really apologized and admitted he was wrong.
"But I guess no one's perfect, and whatever way a person thinks, it's hard for anybody to change that."
More Thurmond letters foundSenator's notes with biracial daughter in files
By John Monk and Eileen WaddellKnight Ridder
But, for all their careful, businesslike tone, the letters also show Strom Thurmond took an interest in Essie Mae Washington Williams' life and the lives of her children, his grandchildren.
COLUMBIA - Handwritten on pink stationery, the April 29, 1946, letter is brief: a note from a young person to a politician she knows.
"Judge Thurmond:
I wish to let you know that I received the telegram. Thank you very much.
I'm getting along as well as ever. School is fine, finals will be this month. I haven't heard anymore from A&M about my acceptance as yet. I hope to as soon as possible. I will let you know when I do. Until then, I am
Sincerely yours, Essie Mae"
That 58-year-old letter is the first known written link between the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond and his long-secret biracial daughter, Essie Mae Washington Williams.
The newly discovered letter, along with some two dozen other new letters and records that connect Thurmond, who died June 26, 2003, and Williams, now 78, was found in Thurmond's archives at Clemson University.
Reporters from The (Columbia) State uncovered the records, most from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, in those archives, which contain about 8 million pages of the late senator's letters and other documents.
The new documents, along with half a dozen or so previously known letters, provide the most detailed portrait to date of how Thurmond, South Carolina's most powerful politician of the 20th century, led two lives.
Publicly, Thurmond was a segregationist, opposing any mixing of races. Privately, he had a child with a black woman and kept in touch with their child for decades.
The letters between Williams and Thurmond were worded carefully.
These were more or less business letters, Williams said in an interview. "There was never anything personal in it. Of course, my reasoning behind that was, in case anybody opened the letter, there wouldn't have been anything there for them to get from it."
Early in his 48-year Senate career, Thurmond instructed Williams to write "very personal" on the outside of envelopes of her letters to him. Staffers put letters with that notation on his desk unopened, he wrote Williams.
But, for all their careful, businesslike tone, the letters also show Thurmond took an interest in Williams' life and the lives of her children, his grandchildren.
The records show:
The earliest known letter between Thurmond and Williams was in April 1946.
Thurmond started making Williams loans the next year.
Initially, Thurmond had her sign promissory notes. But later he stopped that practice, making it clear the cash was a gift.
Thurmond apologized that he and his wife, Nancy Moore Thurmond, were not able to attend the Los Angeles high-school graduations of two of his granddaughters, Monica and Wanda, in the early 1970s.
Thurmond tried to help Williams get a mid-level federal job in 1973.
Without acknowledging their relationship, Thurmond tried to help his grandson, Ronald Williams, get into the University of South Carolina medical school and Charleston's Medical University of South Carolina in 1975.
Thurmond tried to help Essie Mae Washington Williams save the Army job of one of her friends in 1975.
Thurmond and Williams or her children met at least half a dozen times in his U.S. Senate office in Washington, according to his office calendars. The last known visit, between Thurmond and granddaughter Wanda Terry, was in June 2002.
Dan Carter, a nationally known University of South Carolina historian, said, "The State's discoveries are valuable because they help document Thurmond's bizarre double life of maintaining contact with someone who is your flesh and blood, important to a Southerner, yet at the same time managing to separate that completely from your politics."
By having a child with a black woman, Thurmond violated taboos on interracial sex, Carter said. At the same time, he was a leading segregationist.
Williams had not expected more records of her communications with Thurmond to be found, she said. Previously, only a handful had been turned up by The Washington Post and writers of a 1998 Thurmond biography, "Ol' Strom."
"That really surprises me, because as secretive as he was, we never said anything about being secret, it was just kind of understood. I'm surprised he would keep all that," said Williams, who lives in Los Angeles and is working on a book about her relationship with her father.
The new records include Father's Day, Christmas and birthday cards from Williams to Thurmond. They also reveal Thurmond's efforts to help Williams and her family.
During much of that time, Thurmond worked to deny blacks the right to vote and equal access to jobs, schools, housing and public facilities.
After 1970, faced with an increasing number of black voters, Thurmond became a racial moderate. But he kept his daughter's existence secret.
For all the thousands of people he knew, Williams says there may have been no one with whom her father could share his secret. She said he never apologized for his segregationist stands.
"He didn't believe in apologies," Williams said. "That is one of the things he was criticized for. Even the guy in Alabama, [former Gov. George] Wallace, remember him? He came out and really apologized and admitted he was wrong.
"But I guess no one's perfect, and whatever way a person thinks, it's hard for anybody to change that."
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