Essie Mae Washington-Williams (née Butler; October 12, 1925 – February 4, 2013) was an American teacher and author.

She was the eldest child of Strom Thurmond, Governor of South Carolina and longtime United States senator known for his pro-segregation politics.

[2]: 13  She graduated from college, earned a master's degree, married, raised a family, and had a 30-year professional career in education.

In 2005, she published her autobiography, Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond, which was nominated for the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

Butler sent her daughter from South Carolina to her older sister Mary and her husband John Henry Washington to be raised in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.

In 1976, for example, Thurmond nominated Matthew J. Perry,[7] whom Essie Mae dated in 1947 shortly before she met her husband, to the U.S. Court of Military Appeals.

[6] Washington was a longtime member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, which she joined while at South Carolina State.

[citation needed] In 2004, Washington-Williams applied for membership in the United Daughters of the Confederacy based on her heritage through Thurmond to ancestors who fought as Confederate soldiers.

[12] In 2005, Washington-Williams was awarded an honorary Doctorate in education from South Carolina State University at Orangeburg when she was invited to speak at their commencement ceremony.

It explored her sense of dislocation based on her mixed heritage, as well as going to college in the segregated South after having grown up in Pennsylvania.