While Taylor’s family didn’t let her forget her heritage, they did their best to obscure it publicly. Not long after Taylor was born, her mother and her stepfather, J.J. Miller, moved to Mississippi County, Ark., to find work planting and picking cotton. In both 1930 and 1940, Taylor was marked as white on the census, just like the rest of the Millers. Taylor didn’t assume this new identity all that skillfully. That’s where she was living in the 1970s, when she was christened the welfare queen.

Source: New York Times May 17, 2019 09:56 UTC