Strom’s daughter is class act
TownHall.com
by Kathleen Parker
COLUMBIA, S.C. Ask most thoughtful South Carolinians what they think about Essie Mae Washington-Williams – Strom Thurmond’s biracial daughter who publicly identified herself Wednesday – and you’ll most likely hear: “It’s complicated.”
Commentary doesn’t get any more Southern than that. In the land of manners, you don’t look directly at a thing. You avert your eyes from “unpleasantness.” And you don’t talk directly about people, which would cast doubt upon the quality of one’s upbringing.
So that when a 22-year-old white man named Thurmond takes a 16-year-old black girl named Carrie Butler to his bed, well, things happen. Or they used to. What today would be statutory rape was perfectly legal in 1925 when the black family maid gave birth to Thurmond’s daughter. The cutoff for consent in those days was age 14.