"Gospel's First Superstar"

"Tharpe's first hit, in fact, was the transformed spiritual 'Rock Me,' recorded with her soaring held notes and sexy growls back in 1938–when the latter-day King of Rock & Roll, Elvis Presley, was still a toddler. Tharpe would later hire Grand Old Opry stars the Jordanaires to back her, years before they began working for Presley, who was her unabashed fan. 'Elvis loved Sister Rosetta," recalled the Jordanaires' Gordon Stoker, especially her 'incredible' guitar style. 'That's what really attracted Elvis: her pickin'. He liked her singing, but he liked that pickin' first–because it was so different.'"

Will Hermes sings the praises of Sister Rosetta Tharpe at Rolling Stone.

"Like Them"

"That policies can differ so much among different states—and that such differences correspond so tightly with racial breakdowns—is the unfortunate lesson of welfare reform. Giving states leeway on how they treat their poor has always been a risky proposition, with states with high shares of minorities historically choosing to leave people out. It's only when the federal government intervenes that a more egalitarian response is possible. That, however, may not be what Congress wants."

Alana Semuels at The Atlantic writes that "States With Large Black Populations Are Stingier With Government Benefits."

"Her Greatest Successes and Worst Failures Have the Same Explanation"

"NONE OF THIS is to suggest that Hillary would be an ineffective president—only that her successes and failures would look different from Bill Clinton's and Barack Obama's. Bill's failures often owed to indiscipline. Obama's have stemmed in part from aloofness. If past is prologue, Hillary's would stem in significant measure from unwillingness to change course. Hillary does learn from her mistakes. But only after the damage is done.
"Her successes as president, on the other hand, would likely result from the kind of hands-on, methodical, unyielding drive that both Bill Clinton and Obama struggled to sustain. In her wonkishness and her moderate liberalism, Hillary has much in common with Obama and her husband. But her 'tunnel vision'—in the words of a close friend quoted in Sally Bedell Smith's For Love of Politics—might produce a presidency more stylistically akin to that of George W. Bush. For years now, Democrats have yearned for a leader who champions their causes with the same single-minded, supremely confident, unwavering intensity that they believe Republican leaders bring to theirs. For better and worse, they may soon get their wish."


Peter Beinart in National Journal presents a "Unified Theory of Hillary."

"The Most Notorious Woman in Illinois"

"It’s impossible to define the exact scope of welfare fraud in America then or now. A 1983 publication sponsored by the Department of Justice, for example, estimated annual Aid to Families With Dependent Children overpayments at between $376 million and $3.2 billion—not exactly a precise range. What’s clear, though, is that Linda Taylor’s larger-than-life example created an indelible, inaccurate impression of public aid recipients."

Josh Levin in Slate tells the epic story of Ronald Reagan's "Welfare Queen."

"They Do Not Have to Compromise Their Rights for a Paycheck"

"'Guest workers are too often seen as disposable workers who can be cheated and exploited,' SPLC attorney Jim Knoepp said. 'This settlement sends a powerful message that these workers have rights and that their employers will be held accountable.'"

Chuck Bartles of the Associated Press reports via ABC News of a class-action lawsuit settlement to pay migrant workers in the south nearly three million dollars in back wages.

The Countryside Encircling the City

"Because of agricultural modernization, there were numerous farmers' daughters and seasonal agricultural workers happy to earn a regular paycheck by working in retail. Organized labor had been notably unsuccessful in organizing the South, so Walton did not have to worry about unions. And both his workforce and clientele came from the same relatively homogeneous population. Most of the local black population had fled after a wave of brutal race riots in the 1910s and '20s, so the Southern Plains were almost exclusively white when Walton began his business. Ironically, this troubled past meant that Wal-Mart was the rare major chain store to survive the 1960s without having been embroiled in protests over integration. The region was also overwhelmingly Protestant, and the store came to reflect the socially conservative, Christian culture of its home base. To this day, the company still recruits future executives from a network of small evangelical colleges in the South and nurtures them through the company hierarchy. It has banned from its magazine racks not only Playboy but also Rolling Stone because it was deemed inappropriate for children. And the store's prominent displays were credited by the publishers of Left Behind, a series of apocalyptic Christian thrillers set in the immediate aftermath of the Rapture, with making the books bestsellers."

In The Nation, Jefferson Decker reviews Nelson Lichtenstein's The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business.

Oldest Living Confederate Widow Dies

Valerie J. Nelson in the Los Angeles Times writes an obit for Maudie Hopkins.

Yesterday and Today

Slate runs a series of photographs to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the integration of Little Rock Central High School.
Vanity Fair offers its own slideshow and an article by David Margolick about the post-1957 relationship between Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan. (Via Ghost in the Machine)

And Richard Thompson Ford in Slate and Erin Aubry Kaplan in Salon consider current civil rights protest in the wake of the march in Jena, Louisiana.