Josh Levin

The Queen is the bizarre, true tale of a psychopath who changed American history, an in-depth account of how one beguilingly complex woman, raised in the Jim Crow South and molded by gangland Chicago, transformed the way we think about race and poverty to this day. Linda Taylor was one of the most gifted and most deranged criminals of modern times: a con artist, a thief, a kidnapper, and possibly a murderer. She was also the original "welfare queen." Thanks to Ronald Reagan, who continuously cited Taylor's larcenous behavior during his 1976 presidential campaign, she became the template for an insidious stereotype: the lazy, conniving, Cadillac-driving black woman who gets rich by grabbing public aid checks with both fists. The truth was worse, and more shocking. A rich and inventively reported work of true crime, The Queen takes readers back to a place and time when a criminal like Linda Taylor could bafflingly remain free.

A Villain, Her Victims, and the Power of a Lie

The Queen

"In the fall of 1974, the Chicago Tribune found a woman its readers were sure to hate. Linda Taylor had reported a phony burglary, concocting a lie about stolen furs and jewelry. The detective who checked it out soon discovered she was a scammer, a welfare cheat who drove a Cadillac to collect ill-gotten government checks. Taylor, it turned out, was also a kidnapper, and possibly a murderer. But nobody--not the journalists who touted her story, not the police, and not Ronald Reagan, who railed against Taylor during the 1976 presidential campaign--seemed to care about anything but her welfare thievery. Levin's mesmerizing book, the product of six years of reporting and research, is an empathetic work of true crime, an account of how Taylor destroyed both strangers and those close to her... 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. This is the dazzling story of what was done to Linda Taylor, what she did to others, and what was done in her name."--Dust jacket.

Josh Levin

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