The media didn't know Strom Thurmond had an out of wedlock daughter with his 15-year old maid?

[NNN0LHI]

Who believes not one reporter was ever tipped to this story for over 50 years?

This is one of those cover ups that many people had to know about but was still kept hidden for over 5 decades.

Think about that. 5 decades. That is unbelievable.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3842554/

Sex and Race in the American South

The story of Strom Thurmond and his black maid

By Retha Hill

updated 4:34 p.m. CT, Sun., Jan. 4, 2004
No one knows for sure that it was rape.

In fact, they barely mention the girl at all, just some vague reference to a "relationship" that resulted in a baby girl named Essie Mae. What is known of the mother is this: Carrie Butler was 15 and worked as a maid in Strom Thurmond's parents' house. Strom Thurmond hailed from one of Edgefield, South Carolina's most prominent homes, run by a well-connected lawyer who once killed a man.

She was from Edgefield's legendarily impoverished Black part of town and was poor even by Negro Edgefield standards – so poor, in fact, that when Strom's baby came, she couldn't even afford to clothe or feed her. While Strom, who lived to the ripe old age of 100 – dying just this past June – was just beginning to make a name for himself as a staunch segregationist, Carrie Butler died in poverty and pain at the young age of 38.

The real story

For most of the media, that's the end of that part of the story and the real questions have to do with Thurmond's political legacy as in, how could a man with a staunch segregationist history have fathered a child with a Black girl? snip

"She was 15 at the time and institutionally vulnerable and economically and socially vulnerable, and that was driven by her race and gender," Rose continues. "The fact that it is not at the center of the story is a sign of the deep denial and unconscious response that this nation has to this part of the nation's history." snip

"It is very interesting that the media picked this story up and promoted the idea that the family had worked it out, and she had been acknowledged and that was the end of it. What doesn't get discussed is that this is a woman who was underage, working for a family and he was five years older, and it meets the criteria for rape.