[CrimsonTide4]

Strom Thurmond had other Black Relatives
by Sean Yoes
Special to the NNPA from the Baltimore Afro

BALTIMORE (NNPA) - After decades of silence, 78-year-old Essie Mae Washington-Williams has proclaimed to the world that she is the daughter of the late segregationist politician, Strom Thurmond.

''I am Essie Mae Washington-Williams, and at last, I feel completely free,'' she said during a recent press conference in Columbia, S.C.

However, the Baltimore Afro-American newspapers reported in 1948, the same year South Carolina's then-Gov. James Strom Thurmond was the presidential nominee of the segregationist Dixiecrat Party, that he had several Black relatives, including an uncle and two cousins.

The AFRO initially reported in the edition dated Aug. 17, 1948, that a man named Robert Thurmond, from Morristown, N.J., was Strom Thurmond's first cousin.

''I certainly do know Strom, and he knows me, and he knows of our relationship because we were the only Thurmonds in Edgefield [South Carolina],'' stated Robert Thurmond.

Edgefield was the home of Strom Thurmond and his father, James E. ''Snip'' Thurmond, and, according to AFRO reporter Douglas Hall, Edgefield was the home to several other Thurmonds, many of whom were Black.

At the end of August in 1948, Hall traveled to Edgefield to find the rest of Strom Thurmond's Colored clan.

In the Aug. 24, 1948, edition of the AFRO, he reported the existence of the Rev. James R. Thurmond, a half-cousin of Strom Thurmond, Eva Thurmond Smith, another cousin, and Thomas Thurmond, Strom Thurmond's uncle.

''Why, I remember well when Gov. Thurmond's father used to visit my grandfather. I remember asking my grandfather, why did that White man always visit our home? My grandfather [Thomas Thurmond] told me that they were brothers,'' claimed Rev. Thurmond.

Douglas Hall reported further: ''It seems like everybody up there [Edgefield, S.C.] are Thurmonds. They are of all colors. Some are so White that you cannot tell them from the original Thurmonds. The only thing that surprises Colored Thurmonds is, why is it so important that they are related to the White Thurmonds? It is an old story and 'everybody in these parts knows it.'''

In 1948, Essie Mae Washington was 23 years old and she allegedly had known about her father for seven years. The question is, did she know about her father's other Colored kin?