Apologia

Strom Thurmond biographer Nadine Cohodas addresses the issue of Thurmond's mixed-race daughter today in the New York Times. The motivation for this piece seems to be to offer an explanation about why Essie May Washington-Williams didn't appear in Cohadas's book. As she explains:

During my research between 1989 and 1992 for a political biography of Mr. Thurmond, this matter was occasionally mentioned but was hardly the focus of any conversation I had with the politicians, activists and ordinary citizens — white and black — I spoke to. It seemed like the kind of lore that would naturally attach itself to a man of his generation.

Furthermore, Mr. Thurmond's staff did not seem worried about the matter. Close aides who handled much of his personal business conceded they had heard the rumor but made a convincing case that they saw no evidence that it was true. They were loath to bring it up with anyone and told me they never directly asked Mr. Thurmond about it.

…

Until Dec. 14, when she spoke frankly to a Washington Post reporter, Marilyn Thompson, Ms. Washington-Williams insisted to any who asked that she was only a Thurmond family friend. While others might have provided a roadmap to her door, no one was going to reach the final destination unless and until she made her story public.

It is perhaps true that Ms. Washington-Williams's reluctance to come forward with her story would have prevented even a more diligent researcher from discovering the truth. But more disappointing than her shoddy research habits is her unwillingness to confront what Thurmond's own refusal to come forward means.

Cohodas adopts the conventional view of Thurmond's political career — a typical Southern racist and segregationist early on, he "set the standard for making the transition from one era to another" in the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement. Indeed, she titled the final chapter of her book "Back over the Rubicon: A Man Redeemed, a Life Remembered". But Thurmond's moral failure with regard to his daughter is rather stunning for someone who had supposedly overcome his racist and segregationist past, and Cohodas's refusal to even attempt to explain what it means in the context of the life she chronicled is a failure its own right.