COLUMBIA, S.C. — She entered the hotel ballroom slowly, her head high, a small woman in a bright red suit, and let two of her adult children take her hands as she came up the three steps to the rostrum. The opposite wall was lined with TV cameras, and in the three sections of seats, curious South Carolina citizens, both black and white, drawn by the drama of her story, outnumbered the reporters. Without a word being said, the applause rolled out and the spectators and journalists rose to their feet.
Essie Mae Washington-Williams responded with a nod of her head and took her seat. The 78-year-old, gray-haired grandmother, a retired schoolteacher now acknowledged as the oldest child of the late Strom Thurmond, a mixed-race product of his liaison at 22 with a 16-year-old black housemaid in his parents’ Edgefield, S.C., home, appeared to be entirely in control of her emotions. Three days earlier, she had finally confirmed decades of rumors and told The Washington Post’s Marilyn W. Thompson that she was in truth the daughter of the longest-serving senator, who died earlier this year at age 100.
For a reporter who had watched Thurmond over a half-century, in which he evolved from a staunch segregationist and fierce opponent of civil rights legislation into the proud employer of a racially integrated staff and a patron of historically black colleges, it was an extraordinary moment.
For the people of this state, it was one more demonstration of the strange and powerful ways in which the legacies of the past impinge on the choices and emotions of the present.
That is a universal phenomenon, but in my experience, it is the South, more than any other section of the country, that is haunted by its past. The struggle to come to terms with it consumes more psychic energy here than anywhere else I know.
At breakfast that morning, the mayor of Columbia, Bob Coble, told me that two days earlier he had been in New York City, doing what mayors do in this time of high unemployment — talking to corporate consultants about the advantages of bringing jobs to Columbia.
"I’m going to my first appointment," Coble said, "and what do I see on the marquee of the CNN building, where they have the news bulletins going around in lights? The guy who burned the Confederate flag down here has been barred from ever entering the state Capitol again. That’s the image we have to fight."
As almost everyone knows, South Carolina has been wracked by ongoing controversy over the display at the Capitol of that symbol of the Confederacy. The last two governors — one a Republican, the other a Democrat — were turned out of office in part because of their efforts to resolve the battle. An NAACP boycott of the state is still in effect.
South Carolina has been struggling with an exodus of jobs. "We’re winning the war in Iraq," the mayor says, "but we’re losing to China and India." The last thing it needs is social strife that scares away investors and employers.
Luckily, Columbia has a lot going for it. A new convention center and hotel are under way. The university is expanding its research center and is designated as a national center for fuel cell development. The old warehouse district has been revived and looks like Boston or San Francisco, with its apartments and restaurants.
Into this melange of past controversies and hopeful prospects stepped Essie Mae Washington-Williams. Had she spoken with anger about the hypocrisy of a man who espoused separation of the races but exploited a powerless young black woman sexually, she could have stirred the racial tensions never far below the surface. Instead, she spoke kindly of her father’s outreach to her and the financial support he provided. She seemed entirely sincere in saying that she had kept her silence about her parentage all these years out of respect for him — a debt the senator’s other children acknowledged last week by their ready acceptance of her claimed paternity and her friendship.
The sense I got from members of both races who came to the hotel was one of pride — and of relief. When this model of tact and discretion said that telling the world who she really is made her feel "completely free," they applauded. And when she said she had come back from her longtime residence in Los Angeles to South Carolina to make her first public appearance as the daughter of the former governor and senator, "because my roots are here," they cheered.
For the moment, at least, they were not blacks or whites, they were South Carolinians, able to acknowledge and deal with their past — and the reality of their complex history and heritage.
David Broder is a Washington Post columnist. Contact him by writing to
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