Essie Washington-Williams | Thurmond daughter, 87

Essie Mae Washington-Williams, 87, the mixed-race daughter of onetime segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond who kept her parentage secret for more than 70 years, died Sunday of natural causes in Columbia, S.C.

She was the daughter of Thurmond and his family's 16-year-old black maid. The identity of her famous father had been rumored for decades in political circles and the black community. She later said she kept his secret because "he trusted me, and I respected him."

She was born in 1925 and was raised in Coatesville by her mother's sister and the sister's husband, Mary and John Washington. When she was 13, Mary Washington's sister, Carrie Butler, told Essie Mae that she was her mother.

She met Thurmond for the first time a few years later, in 1941, at a law office in Edgefield, S.C. It was the first of many visits.

While he never publicly acknowledged his daughter, he supported her, paying for her to attend then-South Carolina State College while he was governor. She spent years as a teacher in Los Angeles.

Not until after Thurmond's death in 2003 at age 100 did Ms. Washington-Williams come forward and say her father was the white man who ran for president on a segregationist platform and served in the Senate for more than 47 years.

His family acknowledged her claim after she came forward. She later said Thurmond's widow, Nancy, was "a very wonderful person," and called Strom Thurmond Jr. "very caring, and interested in what's going on with me."

She dropped out of college after her junior year to marry Julius Williams, who became a civil rights lawyer and an NAACP leader in Savannah, Ga. They had four children. She is survived by two daughters and a son.

Her husband died in 1964.

- AP