"I am Essie Mae Washington-Williams, and at last I am completely free."

Said the mixed-raced daughter of one-time segregationist Strom Thurmond in 2003. She kept the secret — because "He trusted me, and I respected him" — at the age of 100. She inherited some of his longevity and lived to the age of 87.

She was born in 1925 after Thurmond, then 22, had an affair with a 16-year-old black maid who worked in his family’s Edgefield, S.C., home. She spent years as a schoolteacher in Los Angeles, keeping in touch with her famous father.

While Thurmond never publicly acknowledged his daughter, his family acknowledged her claim after she came forward. She later said Thurmond’s widow, Nancy, was “a very wonderful person” and called Strom Thurmond Jr. “very caring, and interested in what’s going on with me.”