Thurmond’s Legacy
by Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 17, 2003; 12:53 PM
I just finished watching Essie Mae Washington-Williams on television. It was a moving few minutes.
“I could no longer harbor such a great secret,” the 78-year-old Los
Angeles schoolteacher said. “At last I feel completely free.”She is a proud woman. She is black. And she is Strom Thurmond’s daughter.
The story was broken Sunday by The Washington Post’s Marilyn Thompson, who followed up with this piece in which the late South Carolina senator’s family acknowledged that what Washington-Williams was saying is true. But for many the story got lost in the weekend wave of Saddam coverage.