Brent Staples has an interesting editorial observer piece in today's times about the whole Strom Thurmond situation:

How could Mr. Thurmond, who sought the presidency on a segregationist platform in 1948, have lived publicly as a racist while secretly helping to support a black daughter? This was a common practice in the South, where slaveholders and their descendants produced mulatto children. While some white fathers treated their mixed-race children like dirt, others supported and educated them. They refused to acknowledge them to keep the nonexistent barrier between the races firmly intact.  ¶ 11:58 AM