Carrie Butler was a Black woman born around 1909 in the segregated South, specifically in Edgefield, South Carolina. In the early 1920s, she began working as a domestic servant for the prominent Thurmond family, a position that was one of the few employment opportunities available to Black women during this era. The Thurmonds were an influential white family in the community, with J. William Thurmond serving as a local attorney and former U.S. Attorney. During this period, South Carolina was firmly entrenched in the Jim Crow system. Black citizens faced severe legal restrictions, economic exploitation, and the constant threat of racial violence. For Black women like Carrie, options were extremely limited. Domestic service was often the only accessible employment, placing young women in vulnerable positions within white households.
Carrie’s daily life likely consisted of cooking, cleaning, laundering, and other household duties for the Thurmond family. As was common for domestic workers of the era, she may have worked long hours for minimal pay, with few, if any, days off. The work was physically demanding and offered little opportunity for advancement or financial security. By 1924, when Carrie was approximately 16 years old, she became involved in a relationship with James Strom Thurmond, the son of her employers, who was then in his early twenties. Strom Thurmond was beginning what would become a long political career, having recently graduated from Clemson College and briefly worked as a teacher and superintendent before studying law.
The power dynamics of this relationship were severely imbalanced. As a teenage domestic worker, Carrie had little social, economic, or legal power compared to Thurmond, who came from a privileged background and whose family held significant influence in the community. In the context of the Jim Crow South, interracial relationships—particularly between white men and Black women—existed within a complex historical pattern of exploitation dating back to slavery. The relationship occurred against a backdrop of antimiscegenation laws in South Carolina that criminalized interracial marriage and relationships. These laws remained in effect until they were struck down by the Supreme Court in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, long after Carrie’s death.
In 1925, Carrie gave birth to a daughter, Essie Mae. The birth of this child presented significant challenges in the racially segregated South. The historical record suggests that shortly after Essie Mae’s birth, arrangements were made for the child to be raised by Carrie’s older sister, Mary Washington, and her husband, John Washington, in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. The separation of mother and child was not uncommon for Black women in domestic service, who often lacked the economic means or job flexibility to raise their children while maintaining employment. Additionally, the interracial nature of Essie Mae’s parentage would have presented additional dangers and complications in the South.
While living in Pennsylvania, Essie Mae was occasionally visited by Thurmond, who provided financial support for her throughout her life, though he never publicly acknowledged her as his daughter during Carrie’s lifetime. Essie Mae would later attend South Carolina State College, where these visits became more regular. Information about Carrie Butler’s life after the birth of Essie Mae is scarce. Historical records indicate that she continued to live and work in South Carolina. Her health declined in the 1940s, and she passed away in 1948 at the young age of 38, never having the opportunity to see her daughter grow into adulthood or witness the civil rights changes that would transform the South in the decades following her death.
While Carrie died without public recognition, her daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, would go on to live a full life as an educator and mother. Following Strom Thurmond’s death in 2003 at the age of 100, after his lengthy career as governor of South Carolina and one of the longest-serving U.S. Senators in history, Essie Mae publicly revealed her parentage at the age of 78. Carrie Butler’s story exists at the intersection of multiple historical narratives: the exploitation of Black women in the Jim Crow South, the hidden histories of interracial relationships, and the complex legacy of segregation in American society. Her experience reflects the profound inequalities of her time and the particular vulnerabilities faced by young Black women in domestic service.
Throughout American history, Black women’s stories have often been marginalized or erased. Carrie Butler’s life, though sparsely documented, provides important insights into the lived experiences of Black women in the early 20th century South. The circumstances of her relationship with Thurmond and the separation from her daughter highlight the painful realities of racial and gender oppression that shaped countless lives during this period. Carrie’s story also stands in stark contrast to the public persona of Strom Thurmond, who built his early political career as a staunch segregationist, even running for president in 1948 on a States’ Rights Democratic (Dixiecrat) ticket opposing civil rights for Black Americans—the same year that Carrie passed away. The recognition of Carrie Butler’s life and experiences serves as a necessary corrective to historical narratives that have often overlooked the lives of ordinary Black women and their contributions to American society. Her story reminds us of the importance of recovering and honoring these hidden histories as part of a complete understanding of our shared past.