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Five years later, in , Thurmond became governor of South Carolina and married a young white beauty queen. Thurmond lost that race. But in he was elected to the U. Senate, and he remained there until , when he was years old. Throughout his long career, Thurmond maintained a guarded relationship with his black daughter. He met with Essie Mae frequently, usually in his office, and they occasionally argued about race and politics.

But he never publicly acknowledged that they were kin. We had never confronted the reality of our relationship. Too much remained unsaid. Originally published in the April issue of American History magazine. Subscribe here. Carrie smiled. The age differential definitely affects the outcome in these sexual encounters.

This may be because the teens aren't able to stand up to older men who demand sex without protection, or because they fall for promises of support from men who are out in the workplace. Either way, they are in over their heads. Carrie Butler was left to make decisions that no one her age should ever have to make. She struggled alone for six months before she left town to give her daughter to relatives who could provide a better life than she could.

Young Strom, a teacher at the local high school, was apparently exiled to Florida for a time to sell real estate. He returned to study law with his father. Soon he began his meteoric rise in South Carolina politics, fueled in great part by catering to his constituents' hostility toward people such as Carrie Butler and the daughter he had with her.

The absence of her voice is poignant. Essie Mae Washington-Williams says her mother described Thurmond as "a nice man" and took her to meet him many years after what transpired in That intrigues me, and makes me think that at least the grownup Carrie Butler had a lot of backbone.

Imagine being a Southern black woman in the early s and walking your half-white daughter, the very image of her white father, into his law office to introduce the two. By then Butler was gravely ill and may well have wanted to leave her daughter with something positive, some connection that might make her path in life smoother than her own had been. Butler, who gave birth to her daughter in Aiken, sent her to relatives when she was 6 months old.

For Washington-Williams, contact with her mother after that was limited. Washington-Williams did not see her mother again until she was Butler was living in Chester, Pa. Washington-Williams told "60 Minutes II" in an interview that her mother left the South in the early s, married and had a son.