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Painting a Pretty Picture of an Old Southern Love
One veteran news caster, on Sunday's "Meet the Press," noted the Strom Thurmond story as maybe the one most troubling news story to hit the airwaves in 2003. My question to the gentleman would be: Why? Why is America surprised at all, that the late Senator Thurmond, in the prime of his youth, fathered a child with his family's 16-year old house servant? In fact, I portend that what happened between a pampered, arrogant 22-year-old Strom Thurmond, back in 1925; and, the 16-year old Essie Butler, was neither uncommon, nor surprising in that place and time.
More so, their child, Essie Mae Smith-Washington's existence is but one more reminder of our American heritage, and in particular our southern heritage. What is difficult for most African Americans to believe, however, is Essie Mae's claim that Strom Thurmond was a good and caring father to the black child he bore. The woman's unflinching perception, protection and adoration of the late Senator Strom Thurmond - who most blacks view as one of the great race demagogues of all times - is awe-inspiring. Strom Thurmond, we all recall, eloquently and passionately espoused the importance of separating the races for most of his long political career. Given the man's history, Essie Mae Washington must know the interest her story has garnered. Luckily, she has a doting attorney by her side, for her story is fast becoming a modern-day race saga. The commercial implications are endless. Imagine the books, the plays, the films, the made-for-TV movie deals. And, if her genes are anything like her father's, she has a number of years to enjoy (or regret) this newfound notoriety.
While Essie Mae's coming out of the closet was a daring thing to do at 80-plus years of age, when she could have quietly lived out the rest of her life with the secret never passing her lips; there is another truth. The closet doors behind which her truth was hiding, had very thin walls, with very sheer clothing to hide her. Many of us had at least heard the rumors; and, in many southern circles, the fact that the man who preached hate and separation of the races had sired a half-black child by his family's house servant, was one of those well-known southern secrets.
It was Essie Mae, though, who made it a public truth. It is completely one thing to hear rumors, and something else when at least one person involved, admits to the world that they are true. My very first reaction to Essie Mae Washington's admission was mixed. Here was this attractive older woman who looked as white as she did black, coming forth after all these years to quietly ask Strom's family to admit she existed. There was no hint of bitterness, no recounting of the emotions given the wrong done her over the years. Truthfully, it was a little more than my heart could trust. A child of a man who never publicly owned her, and yet she declares him a loving father? For just one moment, I wondered how her life might have been different if her father had been another kind of powerful man who accepted her and made her birth public?
My human instinct led me to peer into the television screen to see if Strom Thurmond's blood actually ran through Essie Mae Smith-Washington's veins. I quickly discerned that she was truly his. There is no mistaking she is the man's child, and that probably none of Strom Thurmond's legal children look more like him than this elderly woman with the high cheekbones, thin lips, and almond eyes that mirror the face of her biological father. It was yet discomfiting to watch and listen to Essie Mae speak sweetly about a father who visited her at South Carolina State College, an historically black college, during her years there; who sent cash to her via a family employee, and who finally invited her to his senate office to receive financial assistance in a white envelope.
Essie Mae, I can imagine, experienced the Jim Crow era much like most black women born during that most tumultuous of times in American history. But, being half-white, she likely had it a bit easier than her sisters of a darker hue. Yet, even given her mixed lineage, she must have suffered many of the same humilities of being colored. It is a sure bet that Essie Mae's life would have been different, easier in many ways, had she been born of a white mother - even a white house servant. For sure, America would not be surprised that her father was a racist demagogue, and one of the most prolific and dogmatic of conservative politicians espousing separation of the races.
It is most telling that Strom Thurmond's oldest child cannot explain her father's innermost feelings about the race issue, or why he never apologized for his separatist role, even as he claimed to change with the times. In fact, Strom's child with the black servant was never privy to those close-held emotions, thoughts or even discussions. She knows what we know: that, this heir to the confederacy remained a vocal opponent of integration and civil rights until it was no longer politically correct to voice such positions in public; and, no longer expedient for his political rise.
In the final analysis, Essie Mae's story is as old as America's slave history. There is nothing new, nothing enlightening, simply more of the same. We can only be reminded that America's southern history is filled with such stories of slaves, and later, servants being viewed as property to be dispensed of, or used as their providers saw fit. And, as poignant as it is to listen to Essie Mae's words of endearment about Mr. Thurmond; for all practical purposes, hers was a relationship based on that very southern history. As much as she'd like to paint a pretty picture…in the end, we know that Essie Mae's birth, and the sexual coupling that made her a reality, was the remnant of slavery and the notorious southern love that has nothing at all to do with the heart.
Janis F. Kearney is a Chicago writer, former journalist and diarist to President Bill Clinton. A Harvard W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow, she is currently completing William Jefferson Clinton: From Hope to Harlem; and a personal memoir, Cotton Field of Dreams.
Kearney Communications 5138 S. Kenwood Ave.#2 Chicago, IL 60615 (773) 493-2007 --ph (773) 493-5747 -- fax janisfk@aol.com |
