Huey Long

It was this big.

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Huey Pierce Long, Jr. (1893–1935), was the governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and a senator from that state from 1932 to 1935. He was the leader who gave the Pelican State roads, bridges and free textbooks for schoolchildren, forcibly modernizing Louisiana into 20th century standards and somewhat redistributing wealth to the largely poor working class. These redistributions of wealth were possible in part because of his willingness to tax Standard Oil and its monopoly, which had been effectively treating the state like a Third World colony for decades.

Economic agenda and government controversies

Long's unabashed economic egalitarianism, cornpone humor and growing national popularity during the Great Depression rankled established economic and political elites in both major political parties. His campaign slogan "Every Man a King" gave popular expression to wealth redistribution policies that they found distressing. They were correct to worry because he fully intended on opposing the interests of the upper class. Long's opponents attacked him as being corrupt and dictatorial, while his supporters claimed that he was no more corrupt than his counterparts in other Southern state governments. More recent critics have accused him of anti-Semitism, particularly due to one of his acolytes being Nazi sympathizer Gerald L. K. Smith.

Even his death could not stop the network of corrupt patronage and populist political framework he put in place, as it lasted for decades. Many buildings at Louisiana State University or LSU ("Go in dumb, come out dumb too", said Randy Newman) are named for members of his administration.

Racial politics

The perception of Long as a racial egalitarian was articulated by T. Harry Williams, who spoke of him as "the first Southern mass leader to leave aside race baiting and appeals to the Southern tradition and the Southern past and address himself to the social and economic problems of the present." Historical biographer Glen Jeansonne attributes Long's lack of public racial demagoguery as the subsequent irrelevant nature of race following the Louisiana Constitution of 1898.

Portrayed frequently as an enemy of the Ku Klux Klan, his actual record however speaks a different tone. John M. Parker in the 1920s and Jimmy Carter a generation later established moments of bold racial stances by Southern standards, although Long did not. His electoral strength was based in northern Louisiana, the state Klan's stronghold. Long's lack of public racial demagoguery was consistent with the Louisiana status quo politically in the era he lived, where systemic unchallenged white supremacy rendered race an irrelevant issue. His opposition towards aid to Black people manifested in arguments that such programs would be "wasted" and the marginal economic advantages gained by Black people were unintentional. Long's policies constituted not an exacerbation of white supremacy, rather a maintenance of the status quo Jim Crow. His Share Our Wealth clubs were almost entirely segregated if Black people were admitted.

Long was closely connected with the Klan of Alexandria, Louisiana during the KKK's peak in the mid-1920s, only vocal in his public denunciations when it withered into political oblivion by the 1930s. He opposed anti-lynching legislation as senator, vowing to "vote 100 percent against the Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching bill that's been brought up there in Washington. We just lynch black people for fun. No federal anti-lynching bill would help that."

Assassination

Long was shot by a assassin Carl Weiss, the son-in-law of opposition judge Benjamin Pavy who would likely lose his job if Long got a redistricting bill passed, on September 8, 1935. He died on September 10, and bullet holes still mark the place by the elevator on the main floor of the State Capitol where he was struck down. The Kingfish was so popular among Louisianan workers that 200,000 of them assembled for his funeral in Baton Rouge.

Like Kennedy, there are many conspiracy theories surrounding his demise.

Good Huey

• Sued railway companies for overcharging fees.
• Gave Louisiana 600%+ more paved roads, and free textbooks.
• Created the LSU medical school.
• Gave work-scholarships to students
• Eliminated the poll tax.
• Taxed Standard Oil.
• Doubled charity health-care funding.
• Anti-war.
• Broke a stranglehold that business interests had on the news.

Bad Huey

• Racist.
• Cooperated with Southern racial demagogues like Eugene Talmadge, a short-lived effort financed by Texas segregationist John Henry Kirby.
• Reduced the autonomy of local government.
• Was a sexist, referring to women as "damned skirts."
• Declared martial law, banned public gatherings in response to threats of a military assault on the state government by opponents and fired tear gas at protesters.
• Gave Gerald L. K. Smith, who would later become a Nazi sympathizer, his start in politics.
• The LSU football team had its own airplane... in the 1930s.
• LSU stadium constructed under guise of "dormitories with viewing decks on top around a courtyard."
• Threatened to limit freedom of the press.
• Committed bribery (and in Louisiana of all places!)
• Demanded a cut from all state employees' salaries.
• Appointed his best friend as governor. His best friend then did whatever Long told him, giving Long the power to appoint all state employees.
• Had conflicts of interests in passing many of his bills.
• Underpaid the workers who paved his new roads.

All The King's Men

For such a once powerful figure on the national stage, Huey Long is now chiefly remembered for his loose association with a book written a decade and a half after his death, Robert Penn Warren's All The King's Men. The book is about a larger-than-life cynical, populist, corrupt, progressive, and mesmerizing Louisiana political figure named Tony Eddard Willie Stark and narrated by his conflicted hatchet-man Jack Burden. Despite the theme of the novel, whether or not man was inherently evil and the effects of such a belief, being obvious to anyone who actually read any more than the blurb on the back (the characters, especially Stark, have long, erudite arguments about this), the book is often denounced as an attack on the great man or an apologetic for the monster. The book has been made into a pair of movies, and at least the first version was really good.

See also

• Charles Coughlin - Both men rose to prominence in the Depression, albeit on opposite sides of the political spectrum.
• Earl K. Long - The wrong Long lived to a ripe age of 65. Here's his mistress.
• Smedley Butler - Long was a big fan of Butler and would have likely nominated him for secretary of war had he lived and won the 1936 presidential election.
• Townsend Plan

External links

• hueylong.com
• PBS profile

Videos

• Every Man a King, his campaign song
• Huey Long wants you to "Share the Wealth"
• Huey Long on High Popalorum and Low Popahirum
• Huey Long: The Dictator of Louisiana