Dear Senator: ‘ ... You better change your ways’
Essie Mae Washington, now married to S.C. State University law student Julius Williams, confronts S.C. Gov. Strom Thurmond about his rhetoric during his failed bid for U.S. president as a “Dixiecrat.”
I completely changed the subject. “How could you have said all those terrible things?”
“What things?” He pretended he had no idea what I was referring to.
“About ‘Negroes.’” I used his disdainful term.
“Essie Mae, there is no man in this country who cares more about the Negro than I do. I think you know that.”
He stared hard at me. I had hurt him, genuinely hurt him. He believed what he was saying. “Look around here. Look at your college. Look at my programs. I’m doing all that’s humanly possible.”
“All this stuff you said about keeping us out of your homes, your churches, your swimming pools .”
“Is that really where you want to go, Essie? A white swimming pool? We built a beautiful pool right here on campus.”
“We can’t even go to Edisto Gardens.”
The vast gardens, right outside of Orangeburg, were among the most famous in the entire country, famed for their roses, azaleas, and centuries-old cypress trees. It was for whites only. “That’s like coming to New York City and being told we can’t go to the Statue of Liberty.”
“There’s a big difference between Edisto and the Statue of Liberty, Essie Mae.”
“Then Central Park.”
“Essie Mae, Edisto is private property. The owners can do what they want. Private property is the essence of the American democracy. I know you’re an A student in history. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. Would you want the government telling you what to do with your property?”
My father then launched into a defense of his offense against Harry Truman.
“That’s what this campaign was about. That man is like a Communist with the FEPC (Truman’s proposed Fair Employment Practices Committee). He wants to tell employers how to run their business. He wants to send agents into every shop, every factory, to make sure Negroes are put there, whether they’re qualified or not. That’s the way Stalin does in Russia, sending his spies everywhere. You don’t want the federal government in your life. Then we’re all slaves. Do you want that in your country, Essie Mae?”
“I want black people to have jobs.”
“So do I, Essie Mae. That’s why I love this school, which gets Negroes qualified. I’m working on a lot of educational reforms. Essie Mae, I’m a schoolteacher! I believe in education. That’s the way to go. We’ve come a long way. We’re going to go a lot further. But it takes time.”
“The backs of the buses, the railway coaches, the colored balconies at the movie shows. ... It’s not fair.”
“It’s the South, Essie Mae,” the governor spoke with finality. “It’s the culture here. It’s the custom. It’s the way we live.”
I could tell the “we” didn’t include me.
“You don’t go to England and tell them to get rid of the queen and the royalty. That’s not fair, either, but it’s the custom. They got rid of the royalty in Russia, and what do you have? Communism! A police state. It’s no different from Hitler.”
And neither are you, I wanted to say. What I did say was, “Hitler said the Jews were inferior. You said the Negroes (I often used his terms) are inferior.”
“That is completely untrue, Essie Mae. A terrible falsehood! Where did I say that?”
“I don’t remember. It seemed. ... If you don’t want them around white people, then that means they’re inferior.”
“Not inferior. Different! Different! Imagine! To compare me to Hitler. Not that I haven’t heard it in the campaign. I heard everything. But to hear it from you. Essie Mae. ... You can’t change the South.”
“You don’t want to, sir.”
“Oh yes I do. I’m changing it right now, by having you here, getting a fine education, to get you a fine career. There’s nothing in this country you won’t be able to do, Essie Mae. Nothing at all. Nothing your husband won’t be able to do.”
“We can’t get served at the counter at Woolworth’s.”
“Why would you want to? The food’s no good. I bet these restaurants right over here are much better. They serve good fresh food. I know they do. You can’t get a vegetable at Woolworth’s. I’ve never seen spinach, green beans at the five and dime. What do you want, a hot dog that will kill you?”
“I guess I want the choice, Governor.”
“Stand up for what matters, not hot dogs at Woolworth’s. I’m standing up for the Negroes. Ask your president here. He knows what I’m doing. The future of South Carolina depends on the amelioration of the condition of the Negro. I love this state. But give me time. Give me a chance.”
“A lot of Negroes, Negroes here, are hurt by what you said.”
“That’s politics, Essie Mae. You’re in the heat of a campaign, you get misquoted, taken out of context. Look at the deeds, not the words. They made me sound like I thought lynching was no problem, but you saw that I prosecuted that Willie Earle case.”
“You lost.”
“This is the South, Essie Mae,” he kept repeating. “The party was called the States’ Rights Party for a reason. The South has had enough problems with the federal government. Reconstruction left terrible scars on this region that still haven’t healed. Southerners are ultra-sensitive about Yankee interference, telling them how to live their lives. It’ll all work out in time, but change takes time. Imagine if your husband tried to force you to kiss him. You’d say no. You’d resist. But if he gave you time, let you get to know him ... see? You end up married. It all works out.”
Given his own marriage (to a much younger woman), my father’s choice of analogy was highly unfortunate. It made me extremely uncomfortable.
‘YOU BETTER CHANGE YOUR WAYS’
In 1964, Washington-Williams and her family are living in Savannah. Seeking a fresh start, they prepare to move for the second time to California.
Julius needed to stay in Savannah until he could settle the remainder of his cases there.
I decided to make the trip with the children. I thought it would be a great adventure for them. Before we began our cross-country drive in Julius’s old black Dodge that he had purchased from our minister, I went up to Coatesville to say goodbye, and I stopped in Washington, too.
Strom Thurmond’s biggest headline that far in 1964 involved the wrestling match he had gotten into outside of the Senate chamber with Senator Ralph Yarborough, who was from Texas but was considered a liberal in the Lyndon Johnson mode, a mode my father would characterize as “turncoat.”
Both my father and Yarborough were sixty-one, but my father, physical fitness fanatic, was far leaner and meaner. He pinned the liberal Democrat to the marble floor and wouldn’t let him go until he hollered “uncle.”
Once more, I cringed at my father’s behavior and how the public saw him. However, in the South the people saw him as a champ, and I guess he really cared only about how Southerners felt. Yankees, to him, didn’t count.
“I’m sick of fighting the Democrats,” he told me when I was in his office.
Given his grudge match with Senator Yarborough, he must have meant it literally and figuratively.
“We’re way better off with the Republicans.”
He told me he vastly preferred the Republican front runner Barry Goldwater to the Democratic incumbent Lyndon Johnson, though he did tell me that he found “First Daughter” Lynda Bird Johnson extremely attractive and couldn’t understand why she would waste her time with tanned actor George Hamilton. I had the feeling my father wanted to date her himself, regardless of his attacks on her father, regardless of the huge age gap. He was relentless in that way, in pursuit of a woman, in pursuit of a political result.
Now he was relentless in his hatred of the Democrats. He went into a litany of Democrat atrocities: The Democrats cowardly backed down from invading Cuba during the missile crisis and lost a great opportunity to free our hemisphere from the Russian threat. The Democrats were plunging us into a pointless war in Vietnam. The Democrats were turning America into a welfare state. The only thing he didn’t say was that the Democrats were soft on segregation.
I said it for him.
“What was that, Essie Mae?”
“The Democrats are soft on segregation.”
“I never said that,” he bristled.
“Only a million times, Senator.”
I was leaving for California. Somehow I felt liberated. I would speak my mind for once. And Julius’s mind, as well. “You say black people are inferior.”
“I never said inferior. I said different.”
“Then what am I?”
“Are you all right, Essie Mae? What’s gotten into you?”
“If you mean what you say, how could you ... how could you ... love ... my mother?”
He didn’t speak for the longest time. He just looked like the wind had been punched out of him. It was a question he never expected to be called to answer. And he didn’t. He kept silent. He poured some water from a Poland Springs bottle. He offered me a glass.
“No, thank you, sir.”
“You should drink at least three full glasses a day.”
“Do you look at me as a Negro, Senator?”
“I look at you with a lot of pride, Essie Mae,” he said, always knowing how to flatter his way out of a tight corner. This time it wouldn’t work.
“I hate to say this, sir, but do you realize how black people feel about you?” I asked him point blank, amazed at my own boldness.
“I’m dedicated to the improvement of the Negro race ... ”
He was trying to turn this into a campaign speech. I wouldn’t let him.
“Black people hate you, Senator. My husband hates you. I tried to speak up for you. But he hates you. Almost all black people do. They don’t see you as a friend. They see you as the enemy. Their worst enemy. Is that the way you want to be looked at?”
He sat silently again, astonished at what I was saying. He wasn’t angry. He didn’t think I was being “uppity.” He was just stunned.
“More and more black people are going to be voting. They want you out of office. Do you want them to turn you out, sir? Because if you don’t, you better change your ways.”
I stood up to go. He stood up. He had the envelope waiting. At first I refused to take it. He pressed it into my hand. “You’ll need this in California.”
“No, thank you, sir.”
“A little spirited debate never hurt anybody. Essie Mae, I’m glad you spoke your mind. I surely speak mine.”
He flashed a smile at me, putting the envelope back into my hand. “Now you go back to school, like I’ve been telling you. Just do it.”
And then he hugged me and kissed me goodbye. “I’ll miss you,” he said.
“Y’all come back now, you hear?” my father’s pretty secretary drawled at me as I left to be chauffeured back to Union Station. I didn’t know if I would ever be allowed back.
Even though he was polite, that was the way politicians were, never showing their true feelings, and Strom Thurmond may have been the most guarded politician of them all.
I may have just seen my father in person for the last time, I thought to myself. The envelope had thousands of dollars, hush money, Julius had angrily called it. There’s an old Southern expression, “Hush your mouth,” which means to keep your trap shut.
I would never go public with my secret, I thought, but at least I hadn’t “hushed my mouth” with my father this time.
And I was glad that I hadn’t.
Excerpted with permission from “Dear Senator, A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond,” by Essie Mae Washington-Williams and William Stadiem, published by Regan Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publisher. The book is on sale at area bookstores and other retail outlets.
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