Victim Essie Mae Washington-Williams

A victim of racial prejudice and hypocrisy is Essie Mae Washington, daughter of prominent segregationist U.S. Senator Strom Thurman of South Carolina.

Essie Mae's conception was the result of a youthful indiscretion of Thurman, then 22, and Carrie Butler, a 16-year-old servant in his family's home.

The baby was sent to Pennsylvania to be brought up by Carrie's older sister and her husband, Mary and John Washington. Essie Mae was not told the identity of her father until 1941, when she was 16. At that time she was allowed to meet him for the first of a number of irregular get-togethers.

Thurman paid for his daughter's education. Essie Mae went on to earn a master's degree and had a roughly 30-year career teaching in the Los Angeles public schools.

Essie Mae did not go public about her parentage until Thurmon's death in 2003, at age 100, when Essie Mae was 78. "Senator Strom" had been in Congress longer than any other American and along with North Carolina's Jesse Helms, was regarded as iconic figures of the Old South.

Essie Mae, who has showed remarkable forbearance about her life's secret story, in 2004 saw her name carved into the Thurman monument at the state's capitol building in Columbia, listed there among his other children.