Strom Thurmond's family confirmed his Black daughter six months after his death, and South Carolina added her name to his monument

Essie Mae Butler was born on 12 October 1925 in Edgefield, South Carolina. Her mother, Carrie Butler, was 16 and worked as a maid for Thurmond's parents. Strom Thurmond was 22 and unmarried. She learned who her father was at 13 and met him in 1941. He paid for her education at South Carolina State College from 1947. Thurmond ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist ticket. He died on 26 June 2003, aged 100. In December 2003 Essie Mae Washington-Williams, then a retired Los Angeles schoolteacher of 30 years, announced that he was her father. On 16 December 2003 the New York Times reported that the Thurmond family acknowledged her. In 2004 the South Carolina legislature approved adding her name to the list of his children on his monument at the State House. She applied to the United Daughters of the Confederacy through his ancestry and was rejected because his name was not on her birth certificate. Her memoir, Dear Senator, came out in 2005. She died in Columbia on 4 February 2013, aged 87. No claim by her against his estate was reported^†.