Essie Mae Washington-Williams - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Washington was the natural daughter of Carrie Butler, who was 16 when her daughter was born, and Strom Thurmond, then 22. Butler worked for his parents as a domestic servant. She sent her daughter from South Carolina to her older sister Mary and her husband John Henry Washington to be raised in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. She was named Essie after another of Carrie's sisters, who fostered her briefly as an infant. Growing up, Essie Mae lived with a cousin seven years older than she, who she believed was her half-brother. Washington was unaware of the identity of her biological parents until 1941, when she was 16, when her mother told her and took her to meet Thurmond in person.

Washington and her mother met infrequently with Thurmond after that, although they had some contact for years. After high school, Washington-Williams worked as a nurse at Harlem Hospital in New York City, and took a course in business education at New York University.

She did not live in the segregated South until 1942, when she started college at South Carolina State University (SCSU), a historically black college. Thurmond paid for her college education. After having grown up in Pennsylvania, Washington was shocked by the racial restrictions of the South. She graduated from SCSU around 1946 with a degree in business.