The Original 'Welfare Queen'

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2019

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's a pernicious stereotype, but it was coined in reference to a real woman named Linda Taylor. But her misdeeds were far more numerous and darker than welfare fraud. This week: how politicians used one outlier's story to turn the public against government programs for the poor.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Code Switch, I'm Jean Demby.
0:01.8	And I'm Shireen Marisol Maraji.
0:04.5	It was the fall of 1974 when the Chicago Tribune ran a story with this lead.
0:09.6	Linda Taylor received Illinois welfare checks and food stamps,
0:12.6	even though she was driving three 1974 autos, a Cadillac, a Lincoln and a Chevrolet station wagon,
0:18.8	claimed to own four south side buildings and was about to leave for a vacation in Hawaii.
0:24.4	That story went on to say that she had at least 27 different aliases,
0:28.1	she had dozens of addresses, she had three social security cards,
0:31.0	and they like really wanted you to understand that she was trifling.
0:34.4	So they mentioned that she had recently got married to a sailor who was 20 years her junior.
0:39.6	Wait, what's trifling about that?
0:41.2	Oh, because they were just trying to make it.
0:43.3	They just trying to make her seem, so you know, she was like out there.
0:45.8	Oh, God.
0:47.3	So it didn't take long for this local Chicago story to go whatever the 1974 version of viral is.
0:53.3	It ran on newswires and papers across the country.
0:56.0	And for politicians who wanted to cut welfare spending,
0:59.4	including a certain California governor and presidential hopeful named Ronald Reagan,
1:03.4	he keeps coming up on our episode.
1:05.0	Yes, he does.
1:06.1	The story of this woman's grift and her prophecy was a godsend.
1:10.6	She became a staple at Ronald Reagan speeches.
	...

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