Dear Senator: A Memoir of the Daughter by Strom Thurmond.

Dear Senator: A Memoir of the Daughter of Strom Thurmond by Essie Mae Washington-Williams and William Stadiem ReganBooks/HarperCollins, January 2005, $24.95, ISBN 0-060-76095-8.

"In 1957, my father set a record, which still stands, for the longest filibuster in congressional history," Essie Mae Washington-Williams recalls in this book. "For over twenty-four hours, he stood on the Senate floor cataloging what was wrong with President Eisenhower's proposed civil rights law ... My father seemed like an anachronism from the Old South, a throwback, a laughing stock. Rather than hate him, I pitied him."

Washington-Williams, a 79-year-old retired teacher, came forward in December 2003 to tell the world that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond. His family publicly confirmed he had fathered the child, who was born when he was 22 and her mother was 16. The man who had served longer in the United States Senate than any other lawmaker in history, 1954 to 2003, and had once been one of the most ardent opponents to civil rights, died in June of that year.

Essie Mae grew up mainly with an aunt and uncle in a steel mill town not far from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She did not learn of her natural mother's existence until she was 13 and of her natural father's identity until she was 16, when her mother took her to meet him at his law office. In later years, Washington-Williams had frequent occasions to visit with him, and he quietly contributed support in cash over the years. In some corners, their relationship was an open secret.

Washington-Williams said that she had previously kept silent largely out of respect for the Thurmond family--her family. After going public in 2003, she said in interviews then that she did not know the nature of Thurmond's relationship with her mother, Carrie Butler, who had been an under-age servant in the politician's home in Edgefield, South Carolina.

Now, in this book, the authors paint a picture of a long-term, loving relationship between the mother and Thurmond, still evident to the teenage Essie years later. The authors seem to go out of the way to have Miss Washington/Mrs. Williams refer to the Senator as "my father," repeatedly and unconvincingly, and to depict him as a kindly old man who loved his daughter in his own way. Perhaps, this was in hopes that she and we would forget his pivotal role in trying to hold back the aspirations of the vast majority of black people.

Granted, the hearts of the segregationists were complex mazes in which love and hate probably did coexist--not to mention lust and the desire to protect one's political credentials--nor was Thurmond unredeemable in his later years. He clearly repented of his earlier racial sins to embrace the black electorate. There is much detail about the inner landscape of Washington-Williams's life and not nearly enough on the politics and contradictions of the times. That Washington-Williams seemed able to see and love Senator Thurmond as a fully human creature with all his flaws, probably says more about her character than his.

Angela P. Dodson is the executive editor of BIBR.