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Born on August 30, 1893, Huey Pierce Long, Jr., was the seventh of nine children. Although he often spoke of his childhood as one of extreme poverty, in fact he grew up in comfortable, if not affluent, surroundings. A precocious and articulate child, he was also undisciplined and prone to rebel against the requirements of formal education. After desultory work as a traveling salesman, Long entered Tulane University Law School. Although he managed to finish less than a year of coursework, he persuaded state officials to give him a bar exam, which he passed, becoming a lawyer at the age of twenty-one.

Long admitted that for him the law was merely a means to a political career, which he began in 1918 with his election as a state railroad commissioner. A lifelong member of the Democratic Party, he established himself from the beginning as a populist--more specifically, as a crusading underdog who attacked corporations like Standard Oil and establishment politicians who did the bidding of big business. After serving on the Louisiana Public Service Commission and running unsuccessfully for governor in 1924, he won the governorship in 1928 on a platform promising free textbooks for schoolchildren and a massive highway building program. Long consolidated his power quickly by putting his cronies in state offices and by establishing his own newspaper. His abuse of power led to impeachment proceedings, which he was able to quash by bribing and intimidating state legislators.

Called a dictator, Long retained and enhanced his power by winning a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1930 but holding his position as governor until 1932; in that election year, his close associate and chosen successor, O. K. Allen, won the governorship. Initially supporting Franklin Roosevelt in the 1932 election for president, Long became increasingly disenchanted with Roosevelt's unwillingness to implement the radical share-the-wealth program that Long advocated in national radio addresses and on the Senate floor. In 1933 he published his autobiography, Every Man a King. With a serious mass following throughout the country, Long might have mounted a vigorous challenge to Roosevelt's reelection campaign in 1936, but he was assassinated; Long was shot on September 8, 1935, and died two days later. His visionary work My First Days in the White House was published after his death.

By all accounts Huey Long was a spellbinding speaker. No matter the platform--the radio, the Senate floor, or small towns and large cities alike during campaigns--long was a consummate performer who could adjust the level of his talk to his audience. In rural Louisiana he was a common man, using plain and simple language. On the Senate floor he could be eloquent in tearing apart legislation by his colleagues that either ignored or did not do enough to relieve the economic plight of Americans. Over the radio, he appealed directly to Depression-era audiences of millions, addressing poverty, joblessness, and the growing influence of corporations and wealthy individuals who, in Long's view, prevented the "everyman" from becoming a king--that is, master of his own fate, on equal terms with every other man.

Long approached populism with religious fervor, claiming no special insight of his own but rather simply maintaining a dogged insistence on following the teachings of the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. The latter document was his key authority for attacking the Roosevelt administration and politicians who did not support the radical egalitarian programs that Long believed should follow from the crucial statement that "all men are created equal." While Long played on people's emotions in portraying himself as a simple, plainspoken man, he also could cite facts and figures to buttress his arguments, demonstrating the legal training that enabled him to be a shrewd and relentless opponent of the status quo.

References:

1. Brinkley, Alan. Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression. New York: Knopf, 1982.

2. Hair, William Ivy. The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey P. Long. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991.

3. Jeansonne, Glen. Messiah of the Masses: Huey P. Long and the Great Depression. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

4. Kane, Harnett T. Huey Long's Louisiana Hayride: The American Rehearsal for Dictatorship, 1928-1940. New York: Morrow, 1941.

5. White, Richard D., Jr. Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long. New York: Random House, 2006.

6. Williams, T. Harry. Huey Long. New York: Knopf, 1969.

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