COLUMBIA, S.C. – Gov. Mark Sanford (search) has signed a bill to add the name of Strom Thurmond's (search) biracial daughter to the list of his children engraved on a monument to the late U.S. senator.
Essie Mae Washington-Williams (search) came forward last year and announced she is the daughter of Thurmond and a black 16-year-old housekeeper who worked in the Thurmond family home.
Thurmond was 22 years old when Washington-Williams was born. He died last year at age 100.
The governor signed the bill June 18.
The Statehouse monument was built in the late 1990s with $850,000 in private donations. The statue depicts Thurmond as he was in the 1960s — in the midst of a political career that spanned most of the past century.
He was once an avowed segregationist and ran for president in 1948 as a Dixiecrat on the platform of maintaining separate schools for blacks and whites.
Thurmond also had four children with his second wife, Nancy.
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