Status
Available
Genres
Publication
Little, Brown and Company (2019), 432 pages
Description
"On the South Side of Chicago in 1974, Linda Taylor reported a phony burglary, concocting a lie about stolen furs and jewelry. The detective who checked it out soon discovered she was a welfare cheat who drove a Cadillac to collect ill-gotten government checks. And that was just the beginning: Taylor, it turned out, was also a kidnapper, and possibly a murderer. A desperately ill teacher, a combat-traumatized Marine, an elderly woman hungry for companionship -- after Taylor came into their lives, all three ended up dead under suspicious circumstances. But nobody -- not the journalists who touted her story, not the police, and not presidential candidate Ronald Reagan -- seemed to care about anything but her welfare thievery. Growing up in the Jim Crow South, Taylor was made an outcast because of the color of her skin. As she rose to infamy, the press and politicians manipulated her image to demonize poor black women. Part social history, part true-crime investigation, Josh Levin's mesmerizing book, the product of six years of reporting and research, is a fascinating account of American racism, and an expose of the "welfare queen" myth, one that fueled political debates that reverberate to this day. THE QUEEN tells, for the first time, the fascinating story of what was done to Linda Taylor, what she did to others, and what was done in her name." --… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member TheLoisLevel
A bit slow towards the beginning but gets better about halfway through.
LibraryThing member bostonbibliophile
This is a wild ride of true crime, politics and race in America, a crazy story about an unbelievable con artist and killer who is remembered, when she is at all, only for the most trivial of her misdeeds. Linda Taylor was a thief, a kidnapper and a slow motion serial killer driven by who knows what
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and for the most part, got away with it all! Show Less
LibraryThing member LyndaInOregon
Levin has done an amazing detective job in ferreting out the facts behind a politically-charged urban legend of the 80’s – the anonymous “woman in Chicago who used 127 names to bilk the government out of $150,000 in bogus welfare claims”, and whose existence Ronald Reagan quoted incessantly
Linda Taylor, the so-called “welfare queen” did indeed flaunt a wealthy lifestyle, including luxury cars and fur coats, but her convictions for welfare fraud amounted to the use of four aliases to collect slightly under $8,000. Most investigators on the case suspected her of having made many, many more bogus claims, but she was never prosecuted for them.
And that, of itself, is one of the more fascinating and frustrating facts about this enigmatic woman who cut a swath of deceit, theft, and probably murder through America’s heartland.
The woman later known as Linda Taylor was born Martha Louise White, in January of 1925, in Tennessee. Though her mother was white, Martha’s father was almost certainly a black man, whom the child never knew. The family presented her as white, partly through pride, and partly because sexual activity between the races was a felony in that place and time. But within the family, Martha always knew she was unloved. In fact her mother, in later years, claimed the racially-ambiguous child had been presented to her as a foundling.
Martha left home fairly early, and racked up arrest records and eight different aliases by the time she was 22. Most of her offenses were based on charges of prostitution and various misdemeanors. When she was 30 years old and already an experienced scam artist, Martha (now using the name Constance Wakefield) attempted to pass herself off as the long-lost child (and therefor legitimate heir) of a Chicago gambler named Lawrence Wakefield, who had died intestate and with no known heirs to grab an estate valued at roughly $7 million. (That was the point at which her mother supported the “foundling” story.) While “Constance” was never successful in getting her bogus story accepted, she apparently began filing for welfare to support herself and her five children, the number of whom was frequently inflated as she double- and triple- and quadruple-dipped into the Family Aid program in Chicago.
Eventually, she moved on from that, collecting a number of new aliases, including primarily “Linda Taylor”. When she filed a false burglary claim (and likely not for the first time), she came to the attention of a Chicago detective, and a series of investigations followed which led to her conviction on the four fraud counts and some jail time.
But her career was far from over. Taylor went on to a number of other lucrative scams, including quite probably baby-brokering and murder for profit.
Levin’s unreeling of the tale jumps around in space and time and is frequently hard to follow. For the reader who is hopelessly lost, he does include a brief biographical timeline at the back of the book.
But Taylor’s story is far more than that of a single woman whose greed led her astray. As the anonymous “welfare queen”, her cautionary tale was used as a springboard to various reframings of family aid programs across the nation, over a time span of decades. Her identification at that time as a black woman reinforced profiling of an entire race as cheaters and parasites. And her many interactions with the courts showed a shocking disarray in American jurisprudence.
How did she get away with so much for so long? Why, when she had a long history of bail-jumping, was she so often released on bond, only to disappear for years and to continue her abuses sometimes scant miles from her former haunts? How could authorities refuse to investigate the barbiturate-poisoning death of a woman she was supposedly providing care for, and later decline to investigate the shooting death of one of her husbands shortly after he had taken out large insurance policies? Why were so many of her welfare claim records lost? How could court after court after court present such sloppy prosecution cases that verdicts were repeatedly overturned?
This was not a criminal mastermind. This was a woman with a second-grade education, a massive amount of street-smarts, the ability to convince far too many people with wildly improbably and self-contradictory tales, absolutely no remorse over the lives she destroyed or the laws she broke, and probably the biggest set of balls ever to come out of Tennessee.
Her story stretches the bounds of probability, but Levin nails it down at every conceivable point, following her life to its sad and pathetic end. Not sure there’s a moral to this one, but it’s a stunning piece of work.
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on his road to the White House.Linda Taylor, the so-called “welfare queen” did indeed flaunt a wealthy lifestyle, including luxury cars and fur coats, but her convictions for welfare fraud amounted to the use of four aliases to collect slightly under $8,000. Most investigators on the case suspected her of having made many, many more bogus claims, but she was never prosecuted for them.
And that, of itself, is one of the more fascinating and frustrating facts about this enigmatic woman who cut a swath of deceit, theft, and probably murder through America’s heartland.
The woman later known as Linda Taylor was born Martha Louise White, in January of 1925, in Tennessee. Though her mother was white, Martha’s father was almost certainly a black man, whom the child never knew. The family presented her as white, partly through pride, and partly because sexual activity between the races was a felony in that place and time. But within the family, Martha always knew she was unloved. In fact her mother, in later years, claimed the racially-ambiguous child had been presented to her as a foundling.
Martha left home fairly early, and racked up arrest records and eight different aliases by the time she was 22. Most of her offenses were based on charges of prostitution and various misdemeanors. When she was 30 years old and already an experienced scam artist, Martha (now using the name Constance Wakefield) attempted to pass herself off as the long-lost child (and therefor legitimate heir) of a Chicago gambler named Lawrence Wakefield, who had died intestate and with no known heirs to grab an estate valued at roughly $7 million. (That was the point at which her mother supported the “foundling” story.) While “Constance” was never successful in getting her bogus story accepted, she apparently began filing for welfare to support herself and her five children, the number of whom was frequently inflated as she double- and triple- and quadruple-dipped into the Family Aid program in Chicago.
Eventually, she moved on from that, collecting a number of new aliases, including primarily “Linda Taylor”. When she filed a false burglary claim (and likely not for the first time), she came to the attention of a Chicago detective, and a series of investigations followed which led to her conviction on the four fraud counts and some jail time.
But her career was far from over. Taylor went on to a number of other lucrative scams, including quite probably baby-brokering and murder for profit.
Levin’s unreeling of the tale jumps around in space and time and is frequently hard to follow. For the reader who is hopelessly lost, he does include a brief biographical timeline at the back of the book.
But Taylor’s story is far more than that of a single woman whose greed led her astray. As the anonymous “welfare queen”, her cautionary tale was used as a springboard to various reframings of family aid programs across the nation, over a time span of decades. Her identification at that time as a black woman reinforced profiling of an entire race as cheaters and parasites. And her many interactions with the courts showed a shocking disarray in American jurisprudence.
How did she get away with so much for so long? Why, when she had a long history of bail-jumping, was she so often released on bond, only to disappear for years and to continue her abuses sometimes scant miles from her former haunts? How could authorities refuse to investigate the barbiturate-poisoning death of a woman she was supposedly providing care for, and later decline to investigate the shooting death of one of her husbands shortly after he had taken out large insurance policies? Why were so many of her welfare claim records lost? How could court after court after court present such sloppy prosecution cases that verdicts were repeatedly overturned?
This was not a criminal mastermind. This was a woman with a second-grade education, a massive amount of street-smarts, the ability to convince far too many people with wildly improbably and self-contradictory tales, absolutely no remorse over the lives she destroyed or the laws she broke, and probably the biggest set of balls ever to come out of Tennessee.
Her story stretches the bounds of probability, but Levin nails it down at every conceivable point, following her life to its sad and pathetic end. Not sure there’s a moral to this one, but it’s a stunning piece of work.
Show Less
LibraryThing member stevesbookstuff
She was born Martha Louise White in Arkansas. She became well-known as Linda Taylor, a grifter and a cheat, and the subject of Ronald Reagan’s oft-told story of “the welfare queen” of Chicago. At her death in Florida in 2002, she was called Constance Lloyd. She was a con artist, a kidnapper,
In The Queen Josh Levin tells the story of Martha / Linda / Constance, and there is a lot of story to tell. Levin first wrote about Linda Taylor in a 2013 article for Slate, the magazine for which he is editor. Six years later came this book. I am sure it took that long just to sift through publicly available information and piece together the life of a woman who changed names, ages, races, husbands, life stories and locations so often it boggles the mind.
At the same time, this book is also the story of how politicians, including Reagan, used the specter of "welfare fraud" as a career stepping stone from the 1970s through the 1990s. Levin sets off the true story and scope of Linda Taylor's crimes against the decimation of the welfare safety net that was accomplished through the political drumbeats of "welfare reform" in which a part of her life story became caught up. While Levin draws no overt conclusion in the book, it's clear he comes down on the side of believing that welfare reform has done more harm than good.
I rate this book 3 Stars - I liked this book. If your interests are similar to mine, you might like it too.
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perhaps even a murderer.In The Queen Josh Levin tells the story of Martha / Linda / Constance, and there is a lot of story to tell. Levin first wrote about Linda Taylor in a 2013 article for Slate, the magazine for which he is editor. Six years later came this book. I am sure it took that long just to sift through publicly available information and piece together the life of a woman who changed names, ages, races, husbands, life stories and locations so often it boggles the mind.
At the same time, this book is also the story of how politicians, including Reagan, used the specter of "welfare fraud" as a career stepping stone from the 1970s through the 1990s. Levin sets off the true story and scope of Linda Taylor's crimes against the decimation of the welfare safety net that was accomplished through the political drumbeats of "welfare reform" in which a part of her life story became caught up. While Levin draws no overt conclusion in the book, it's clear he comes down on the side of believing that welfare reform has done more harm than good.
I rate this book 3 Stars - I liked this book. If your interests are similar to mine, you might like it too.
Show Less
Awards
Audie Award (Finalist — History/Biography — 2020)
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — Biography — 2019)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults (Selection — 2019)
Language
Original language
English
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