Essie Mae Washington-Williams ( Butler; October 12, 1925 – February 4, 2013) was an American teacher and author. She was the eldest child of Strom Thurmond, governor and United States senator from South Carolina. Of mixed race, she was born to Carrie Butler, a 16-year-old African-American girl who worked as a domestic servant for Thurmond's parents, and Thurmond, then 22 and unmarried. Essie Mae grew up in the family of one of her mother's sisters, not learning of her biological parents until 1938 when her mother came for a visit and informed Essie Mae she was her mother. She graduated from college, earned a master's degree, married, raised a family, and had a 30-year professional career in education.
Washington-Williams did not reveal her father's identity until she was almost 78 years old, after Thurmond's death at the age of 100 in 2003. Though he had little to do with her upbringing, he had paid for her college education and took an interest in her and her family all his life. In 2005, she published her autobiography, Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond, which was nominated for the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.
Early life
Essie Mae was the daughter of Carrie Butler, who was 15 or 16 when her daughter was born, and Strom Thurmond, then 22. Carrie Butler worked as a domestic servant for Thurmond's parents. Butler sent her daughter from South Carolina to her older sister Mary and her husband John Henry Washington to be raised in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. The girl was named Essie after another of Carrie's sisters, who fostered her briefly as an infant. Essie Mae grew up with her cousin, seven years older than she, who she believed was her half-brother. She was unaware of the identity of her biological parents until 1938, when she was 13 and her mother told her the full story. In 1941, her mother took her to meet Thurmond in person.
Essie Mae and her mother met infrequently with Thurmond after that, although they had some contact for years. After high school, she worked as a nurse at Harlem Hospital in New York City, and took a course in business education at New York University.
She did not visit the segregated South until 1942, when she met relatives in Edgefield. After having grown up in Pennsylvania, she was shocked by the racial restrictions of the South. She returned to the North to live with relatives during the war years. After Thurmond returned from World War II, she started college at the all-black South Carolina State College (SCSC) in the fall of 1947. whom Essie Mae dated in 1947 shortly before she met her husband, to the U.S. Court of Military Appeals. Thurmond became the first Southern senator to nominate an African American for a federal judgeship. She had a 30-year career as a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District from 1967 through 1997. They had two sons and two daughters together. He died in 1964. At the time of her death, Washington-Williams had 14 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
In 2004, Washington-Williams said that she intended to be active on behalf of the Black Patriots Foundation, which was raising funds to build a monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to honor American blacks who served in the Revolutionary War. She died before being accepted. She also intended to join the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Washington-Williams was a Congregationalist.
Death
Washington-Williams died February 4, 2013, in Columbia, South Carolina, at age 87.
Legacy and honors
thumb|Strom Thurmond's statue with Essie Mae added. In the phrase "The father of four children", the "four" was replaced with "five".
When Washington-Williams announced her family connection, it was acknowledged by the Thurmond family. In 2004, the state legislature approved the addition of her name to the list of Thurmond children on a monument for Senator Thurmond on the South Carolina Statehouse grounds.