Huey Long

Huey Long was a populist, isolationist and political nationalist American politician who served as the 40th governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932, during the Great Depression.

Huey Long/Huey Pierce Long Jr. was born in August 30th 1893, near the small town of Winnfield, Louisiana, America at the seat of Winn Parish in a log cabin to an impoverished family who lived in a comfortable farmhouse and were well-off compared to others. Winn Parish was impoverished location while it's residents who are mostly Christian Baptists were often outsiders in Louisiana's political system and Winn Parish was a Unionist stronghold in the American Confederacy but wanted to keep the blacks for the wealthy slave planters while in the 1890s, it was a bastion of the Populist Party and in the 1912 election, 35% of Louisianans voted for a Socialist presidential candidate named Eugene V. Debs that lead Huey Long to embrace populist sentiments.

Huey Long has eight siblings while also he is home schooled until 1904, he was sent to public school that earned him a reputation as an excellent student with a remarkable memory and convinced his teachers to let him skip seventh grade. Years later he was at Winnfield High School while himself along with his best friends formed a secret society that planned to laying down certain rules the students would have to follow and run things in school along with wearing a red ribbon for it's members. Huey Long becomes a rebel by writing and distributing flyers that criticized his teachers along with a recently state-mandated fourth year secondary education that lead himself to be expelled from school in 1910, but at least he successfully petitioned to fire the principal.

Due doubtless to the influence of his Christian parents, he became a student of the Bible. Few ordained ministers of the Gospel were as familiar with the contents of the Bible as he was. Seldom, if ever, did he make a nationwide broadcast that he did not quote from the Holy Scripture.

Huey Long was a capable debater and at the state debate competition in Baton Rouge he won a full-tuition scholarship to Louisiana State University but the scholarship did not cover textbooks or living expenses, his family could not afford for him to attend and also Huey Long was unable to attend because he did not graduate from high school but instead he entered the workforce as a traveling salesmen in the rural south. In September 1911, Huey Long started to attend seminary classes at Oklahoma Baptist University at the urging of his mother while living with his brother named George Long but Huey attended for only one semester because he is rarely appearing at lectures. After deciding he was unsuited to preaching, Huey Long now focused on law so he borrowed 100 dollars from his brother and he losses it while playing roulette in Oklahoma City but he attended the University of Oklahoma College of Law for a semester in 1912 while he continued to work as a salesman at the same time. Huey Long has taken four classes in the University of Oklahoma College of Law but received one incomplete along with three C's and later confessed he learned little because he gambled a little too much along with hanging out with women.

Huey Long have met Rose McConnell at the baking contest in which he sells Cottolene shortening to be promoted but then Huey Long & Rose McConnelll are in two-and-a-half-year courtship and they married each other in April 1913 at the Gayoso Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee but on their wedding day, Huey Long borrowed 10 dollars from his new fiancée to pay the officiant. Shortly after their marriage Huey Long started his plans to run for a statewide office, the governorship, the senate and ultimately the presidency. Huey Long along with his wife got three children for example a daughter named Rose Long 1917–2006, a son named Russell B. Long 1918–2003, who is a U.S. senator and a another son named Palmer R. Long 1921–2010, who is an oilman in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Huey Long enrolled at Tulane University Law School located at New Orleans in the fall of 1914 and after a year of study that concentrated on the courses necessary for the bar exam, Huey Long successfully petitioned the Louisiana Supreme Court for permission to take the test before its scheduled at June 1915 so he was examined in May and passed while he received his license to practice.

Huey Long has established a private practice in Winnfield while he represented poor plaintiffs usually in workers compensation cases and avoided fighting in The Great War 1914-1918 by obtaining a draft deferment on the grounds that he was married while having dependent children even he successfully defended himself from prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917, with help from a state senator who had loaned him money. In 1918, Huey Long invested $1,050 in an oil well but the Standard Oil Company refused to accept any of the oil in its pipelines and it cost Huey Long his investment that led him to hate Standard Oil.

Huey Long has entered the race to serve on the three-seat Louisiana Railroad Commission and in the Democratic primary he was polled second behind incumbent Burk Bridges but then a run-off election was held since no candidate garnered a majority of the votes. Huey Long campaigned tirelessly across northern Louisiana but then he defeated Burk Bridges with 636 votes even with wide support in rural areas while low support in urban areas and Huey Long forced utilities to lower rates, ordered railroads to extend service to small towns and demanded that Standard Oil cease the importation of Mexican crude oil to use more oil from Louisiana wells.

In the gubernatorial election of 1920, Huey Long campaigned heavily for John M. Parker even he is credited with helping him to win northern parishes and after Parker was elected, the two became bitter rivals. John M. Parker was now governor of Louisiana from May 11th 1920 until May 13th 1924.

Huey Long was elected Governor of Louisiana in 1928 by the largest margin in the state’s history. In the face of entrenched opposition from the Old Guard, he launched an unprecedented program to modernize the state’s infrastructure and provide universal educational and economic opportunity to the masses. After a failed attempt by his opponents to oust him from office, Huey ruthlessly consolidated his power in the state and became known as the “Kingfish.”

Huey immediately pushed a number of bills through the legislature to fulfill his campaign promises, including a free textbook program for schoolchildren, night courses for adult literacy, and piping natural gas to New Orleans. He also launched a massive construction program of roads, bridges, hospitals, and educational institutions. The public soon began to see the tangible results of his massive building program to modernize Louisiana. As the nation plunged into the Great Depression after the stock market crash of 1929, thousands of Louisianians were at work building the state’s new infrastructure. Louisiana employed 22,000 men just to build the roads — ten percent of the nation's highway workers. With greater access to transportation, education and healthcare, the quality of life in Louisiana was on the notable upswing while the rest of the nation declined

During the Great Depression, he led a mass movement against the policies of Roosevelt's New Deal, and as a populist alternative, Share Our Wealth program called for massive federal spending, a wealth tax, and wealth redistribution. These proposals drew wide support, with millions joining local Share Our Wealth clubs. Roosevelt adopted many of these proposals in the Second New Deal. which attracted more than 7.5 million supporters to his "Share Our Wealth" movement. The basis of his program was a tough progressive tax. The poorest Americans were exempt from taxation, while for millionaires the tax was very high. He was constantly in conflict with the largest corporations, first of all, with Rockefeller's Standard Oil.

Despite claims from right-wing opponents, Long's program diverged significantly from Marxist communism. In particular, the Share Our Wealth program preserved the concepts of private property and the profit motive, while seeking to avoid any need for violent revolution. Indeed, Long himself said that his plan would strengthen the capitalist system by removing its greatest excesses, thereby removing any desire by the American people to do away with it. When asked whether his plan was communist, Long replied: "Communism? Hell no! ... This plan is the only defense this country's got against communism." Long also called his program "the only stop-gap to Communism!" When pressed by a leftist magazine who pointed out that the magnates Long railed against would be saved under his plan, he conceded "That would be one of the unfortunate effects of my program". He concluded to the reporter: "I'd cut their nails and file their teeth and let them live."

Despite being accused of being a political extremist from the left, Long saw his own positions as strengthening the traditions of America. In a film discussing his Share our Wealth societies, Long argued that he was upholding the promise of the Declaration of Independence to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.[28] Long's conservative streak was apparent during his crackdown on gambling and prostitution in the red light district in New Orleans after his breaking with Colonel Robert "Bow-Wow" Ewing who was a Long boss in the city. Ewing had ties to the gambling and prostitution industries in New Orleans and Long, coupled with his disdain for both of the industries, ordered state militia under Adjutant General of the national guard Raymond H. Fleming to "cut out the wide-open gambling" in the city.[29] In a great irony, the conservatives, who deplored such acts as gambling and prostitution, attacked Long for issuing the raids. Their outrage was mostly targeted against the forceful way in which the raids had been executed with female patrons having been "held and searched for money," and guardsman having "burst into establishments with guns drawn forcing patrons to hold up their hands and back against a wall".[30]

Long was a strident isolationist and political nationalist who opposed American intervention abroad and was a strong supporter of tariffs, with Long labelling himself a "tariff Democrat". Along with supporting tariffs, he advocated that the American government disassociate from European efforts to settle war debts and to grant independence to the Philippines. Long argued that Standard Oil had backed rebellions across Latin America to install puppet governments that would be beholden to the company's interests. In 1934, Long claimed that Standard Oil was backing the Bolivian government to make war with Paraguay over the oil-rich northern Grand Chaco region after the latter had refused to grant favorable leasing terms to the company.

The Black Panther Huey Newton was named after Huey Long. Leftists have maligned the legacy of Long, calling him a "fascist" and a "class reductionist" for focusing on class issues and not on cultural issues.