Sharpton Visits Thurmond's Birthplace

A prominent civil rights leader, the Rev. Al Sharpton, traveled Monday to the birthplace of pro-segregation U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond to visit the grave of a Thurmond relative who held one of Sharpton's ancestors as a slave.

Sharpton's trip to this rural town also included a visit to a cemetery where slaves are buried in graves marked only by small stones. He urged all blacks to explore their histories despite "the ugly things it might reveal."

The civil rights leader recently learned of his family's link to that of Thurmond, a segregationist from South Carolina who later softened his stance before he died in 2003. When he found out, Sharpton called it "probably the most shocking thing in my life" and wants a DNA test to see if their families were linked by blood.

Professional genealogists working for Ancestry.com found that Sharpton's great-great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather. Coleman Sharpton was later freed.

"As painful as it is, it's good that it comes out so we can deal with it," said Sharpton.

Phillip White, who owns the plantation-style home visited by Sharpton, said Sharpton's great-grandfather may be buried in the nearby slave cemetery. White gave Sharpton a horseshoe he found in the slave quarters on his property.

Sharpton's trip to trace his roots back to this rural town near the Georgia border comes after Thurmond's biracial daughter said he "overreacted" when he learned about the link to the Thurmond family.

Last week, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, 81, defended Thurmond and spoke of all the positive things he did for South Carolinians, both black and white. Her mother was a housekeeper in the home of Thurmond's parents.

Sharpton said he did not overreact. "This man owned my great-grandfather," he said. "That's not a reaction or overreaction. That's a fact that I have to live with every day that I write my name."

A woman at Strom Thurmond Jr.'s office in Aiken said the former senator's son was not immediately available for comment.

Thurmond, a former South Carolina governor, was once considered an icon of racial segregation. During his 1948 bid for president as the candidate of the States Rights' Democratic Party, he promised to preserve segregation and won four southern states in the national election. As a U.S. senator, he filibustered for more than 24 hours against a civil rights bill in 1957. Thurmond, who later joined the Republican Party, became the longest serving and oldest U.S. senator in history before his death at age 100 in 2003.