She died at her Columbia , South Carolina , home of natural causes Monday morning , according to Frank Wheaton . Essie Mae Washington - Williams kept her father 's identity secret until his death . ` ` I never intended to do anything to harm him , '' she said . Thurmond fathered the child with a teenage black woman in 1946 , family records confirmed . He ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist platform .
Essie Mae Washington - Williams kept her father 's identity secret until his death . ` ` I never intended to do anything to harm him , '' she said . Thurmond fathered the child with a teenage black woman in 1946 , family records confirmed . He ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist platform .