Nephew Acknowledges His Role as 'Pass-Through' to Mixed-Race Daughter
The chief federal bankruptcy court judge for South Carolina, a nephew of former U.S. senator Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), acknowledged yesterday in an interview that he served as a "pass-through" for payments sent by cashier's check to Thurmond's mixed-race daughter in California.
Walter Thurmond Bishop, a longtime South Carolina judge and lawyer who is the son of Thurmond's late sister, Martha, said he sent money at the senator's request whenever Essie Mae Washington-Williams, 78, indicated she needed financial assistance. He said he began communicating with Williams on the senator's behalf in the late 1960s and continued to send money, packaged along with warm personal letters, until recent years.
"He never told me she was his daughter," Bishop said in a car-telephone interview yesterday from Columbia, S.C., where Williams has scheduled an 11 a.m. news conference today. "I could surmise, but he never did point-blank say it."
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She said she met with Thurmond about once a year in sessions arranged through his Senate office and that he treated her cordially before handing her money for continued silence. Thurmond escorted her on a tour of the Senate, she said, and his top aides seemed unsurprised by her visits.
Williams has said she did not discuss politics with Thurmond, although she once asked him about the segregationist views expressed during his Dixiecrat campaign in 1948. He told her he was trying "to please his supporters."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6143-2003Dec16.html