RIP: Essie Mae Washington-Williams, Daughter of Strom Thurmond

  Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the interracial daughter of the late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, has passed away at 87. That I would be alive while someone as vile as Thurmond -- who ran for president on a segregationist platform in 1948 (“All the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes,” he said at the time) -- remained in national politics (until his death in 2003), and when the first black president was elected (five years later) is a testament to the progress America is finally catching up on. But that Washington-Williams seemed to harbor no bitterness toward her father -- who knocked up her mom when she was a teenager maid in the Thurmond household, yet never-publicly-acknowledged his child -- is an even greater testament to the forgiveness this woman had in her heart, something I can't even fathom in this situation. Read HERE.