Excerpt from ‘King Huey: 20th Century Folk Hero’
by Jon Meacham and Tim Naftali (2015)
…President Huey Long is undoubtedly a major figure in the storied canon of great American folk heroes, from Davy Crockett to the romanticization of Honest Abe Lincoln, ‘King Huey’ will forever remain in the American consciousness as one of America’s most eccentric, mythologized, and controversial citizens. To those who supported him, they will tell you that he was the Great Crusader from Winnfield, Louisiana that wielded his political power to strike down the special interests and robber barons that spiraled the nation into the worst economic depression it had ever seen in its history. To those who opposed him, Long was a tyrant that abused his office for personal gain and celebrity, nothing more than a charlatan snake oil salesman duping the American public into feeding his enormous ego. Whatever an individual’s opinion on Long however, one cannot deny the change he brought to American politics and the political dynasty he instated in both Louisiana and the national political scene…
…No aspect of Long’s popularity and eccentricity is better portrayed than after his death in 1990 when the 97-year old Long, still cognitively sharp, organized a funeral truly fit for a king. A 30-piece orchestra played ‘Every Man a King’, Long’s political campaign song throughout his career, before a procession of an ornate pearlescent coffin was brought into the church before an audience of 4,000 at the Washington National Cathedral. Dressed in the pristine white suit that had become a trademark of his public appearances, Long almost appeared saintly, his often unkempt gray hair in his old age finally tamed like in old campaign photographs from half a century prior. The often bombastic and exuberant personality of Long had finally been subdued by death, the photos of the 34th President at the funeral showing a frail old man that was juxtaposed from the boisterous image he had maintained even into his elderly years. Many were skeptical of the untraditional nature of Long’s funeral as a former president, an event usually treated as a sober occasion, many saying that the jovial event was unbecoming of the funeral of a former president. But to quote Long as he brashly put it when he initially received pushback on his funeral plans in 1987:
“If I’m not able to have my goddamn funeral the way I want to have it, I ain’t gonna fuckin’ die.”
If anything, that quote is the quintessential embodiment of Long’s attitudes towards life, politics, and everything in between for the former president. No one was going to tell Huey Pierce Long what to do, and if he didn’t get what he wanted he was not going to bow to the powers that be. Huey Long was going to do what Huey Long wanted to do, and anyone in his path was going to move the hell out of the way…
Interesting, I’m curious how you have Long become president. Most stories I’ve seen based on him have him becoming president by FDR getting killed and Nance being the president from 1932-1936.
Excerpt from ‘Killing the Kingfish’
By Bill O’Reilly (2015)
…Huey Long was a man that made many enemies in Louisiana, the increased control he had over the state government became near-totalitarian when Long had a bill passed through the State Legislature that had given him the power to directly appoint nearly every public official in the State of Louisiana. The bill was passed after a schism began to form in Louisiana’s Democrat-dominated political landscape after Long publicly separated himself from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and had announced his own intentions to run for the presidency in 1936. The prolonged Great Depression that dragged on under Roosevelt’s leadership, along with Long’s experiences in the Senate, had thoroughly convinced him that the two-party system in America was not going to work. According to Long “they [the Democrats and Republicans] are in office not to serve you or I, but only to serve themselves and the interests of their bigwig Wall Street friends”…
…Long was a deeply popular figure in Louisiana, many poor whites and even the black population of the state revered Long for his apparent pursuit of bringing up the poor man in Louisianan society. Indeed, Long had won his first term as governor in 1928 largely through the support of the poor white population in North Louisiana along with the more middle-class Catholic population in the south. Long was popular amongst not just the citizenry of Louisiana, but the nation as well with the establishment of Share Our Wealth clubs across the country with members numbering over 7 million. The Kingfish was so famous in fact, that of the two trucks that delivered mail to the Senate, one was entirely dedicated to mail for Senator Long…
…One group that Senator Long was not particularly popular with was the ruling business and political class that had dominated Louisianan politics for generations. Many in the Louisiana State Legislature disliked Long for his anti-business policies and dictatorial control of the state government but the takeover of the legislature by the pro-Long camp quickly made sure that Long basically ran the state unopposed while working in the national Congress. After his removal of a Judge Benjamin Pavy, Long continued his long march to eliminate all his rivals in Louisiana and was on the way back to his office in the state capitol when the course of his life would forever change…
…Long was strolling down the hallway flanked by his legion of bodyguards before a Dr. Carl Weiss—coincidentally Judge Pavy’s son-in-law—shot him point-blank in the stomach before being gunned down by Long’s bodyguards. Long according to bystanders and his entourage “yelped like a hurt dog” and ran downstairs out to hail a car to take him to the nearby Our Lady of the Lake Hospital. Upon arrival, Long was immediately rushed to the operating room to have the wound in his intestinal region sutured having reportedly lost a considerable amount of blood but still being considered in a stable condition. The doctors, according to those witnessing at the time, were about to stitch up his stomach when a nurse noticed that there was still a substantial amount of blood gathering in Long’s body (at least more than would have been typical) and doctors noticed that the bullet had travelled all the way to the Senator’s kidney. The doctors stemmed most of the internal bleeding and finished up the 4 hour surgery on Long, the nurse likely unaware that she had saved Long’s life should they not have caught the kidney that had continued to bleed internally. The assassination attempt had failed, and many in America were unaware of how it was going to drastically change the landscape of American politics the moment Long was able to get out of his hospital bed…
Excerpt from ‘FDR: The Forgotten President’
By Tim Naftali (2008)
…President Franklin Roosevelt’s worst fear had finally come to pass when in 1935, Senator Huey Long had announced his candidacy for president in the 1936 election. Roosevelt watched frightened as Long gathered millions of followers for his Share Our Wealth programs across the nation, while at the same time railing against Roosevelt’s New Deal as only serving as a “band-aid solution” to America’s deeper economic inequality. Roosevelt was stuck between a rock and a hard place by late-1935, with Long coming out of his hospital stay firing more potshots at the relatively-silent administration while the Supreme Court struck down major New Deal legislation in the summer of that same year. Roosevelt had very little room to maneuver; if he had moved to the left, the Supreme Court would most certainly shut major reforms down; if Roosevelt moved towards a more moderate road, he risked angering his core base of supporters and send them fleeing to Long’s camp…
…The Roosevelt Administration wracked their brains to find a solution to their bind before coming across amending or replacing the Judiciary Act of 1869. The administration quickly polled the public to see what provisions would have been more favorable to the situation before finding that instituting retirement ages for the justices of the court was the most favorable. What the administration failed to examine however, was that later polls would show that they were only riding a wave of support after the Supreme Court had announced their ruling against three separate New Deal reforms on “Black Monday”, a move seen by many as a political one by Charles Evans Hughes. As “Black Monday” quickly receded from the public’s attention, the support for radically reforming the court became significantly less popular. Nevertheless, the White House quickly drafted the Judicial Reform Act of 1935 to counteract both the sandbagging from the Supreme Court and seize much of the reformist followers of Senator Long…
The Judicial Reform Act of 1935 contained four distinct core elements to its reformation of the court:
1. The implementation of an age limit by removing the vote of a justice after the age of 70, only allowing a judge over the age limit to write unofficial concurring or opposing opinions rather than an official majority or dissenting one.
2. The ability for the President of the United States to dismiss a justice should they fail to retire or resign within 6 months of turning 70.
3. The requirement of the Congress to vote on the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice within 2 months of a justice’s nomination.
…Initially skeptical of such radical reforms, the majority of Democrats in the Senate were deeply concerned with the idea of firing a Supreme Court judge simply because of their age. The implementation of the bill would have drastically lowered the number of justices on the court, leaving only three justices by the passage of the bill and only serving to give the Congress even more concern over passing it. Additionally, the justices left would be two New Dealers in Harlan F. Stone and Benjamin N. Cardozo, while the swing vote of Owen Roberts would be the only potentially dissenting opinion for months. The Democrats in Congress were bordering on voting against the measure simply because any potential Supreme Court hearings would take up a significant amount of their potential legislating time but were eventually swayed by the prospect of such a radical as Long potentially seizing more power within the national party and resorting to even more extreme methods like blatant court packing should they fail to do so.The bill would pass with a 58-38 vote in the Senate, a strange turn of events as Long himself voted for the bill, his later reasoning being that he just supported the reforms to the “do-nothing” Supreme Court…
…The public responded horribly to this measure, many conflating the Supreme Court to the protection of the Constitution itself, with the support of Democrats quickly evaporating as Republicans railed against the unconstitutionality of the bill. Ironically, many flocked to Long’s camp anyway despite Long being vocally in support of the act and touting his voting for the bill. This immediately sent the Roosevelt Administration into disarray as the President was experiencing the first major backlash to his administration since taking office. Though his tenth fireside chat would serve to soothe the calmer heads of the opposition, Roosevelt could only watch as Long and the Republicans siphoned more of his public support into their factions and the 1936 election soon looked to be a harder battle to fight than was previously thought…
Transcript of Senator Huey Long’s “Share Our Wealth” Speech
New York Times, January 6th, 1936
“Thank you, thank you. My fellow Americans, I am here to tell you that the man in the White House is not fit to govern. He won’t say it, the Democrats won’t say it, hell even the Republicans were ’fraid to say it before the Supreme Court debacle this past month. For three years Mr. Roosevelt has told you that everything is fine, help is on the way, and ‘happy days are here again’. Well where are they Mr. Roosevelt? When I go back to my home state of Louisiana, where the veneer of robber baron institutions like the banks of J.P. Morgan fail to hide our poverty so insidiously, I find that the people I am charged to represent are not seeing these happy days they were promised. Yet when I came up here to Congress some three years ago now, I have seen nothing but hobnobbing from these bigwig politicians that couldn’t give a damn whether their constituents are even fed. Ladies and gentlemen I tell you that this must end and it must end now.
The people up here care not for your struggles or your plights, they’d rather ignore your letters and give you platitudes to shut ya up and reelect them so they may continue to pay off their rich millionaire pals and live it up in high society. They care not for your problems nor do they represent you, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. Y’know we used to have this doctor come roll around through our town playin’ his banjo and he’d sell two different bottles of medicine. One of ‘em was called ‘high popalorum’ and the other one of ‘em was called ‘low popahirum’ and finally one of the townsfolk went up to the doctor and asked him ‘what’s the difference between these here bottles ‘o medicine?’
‘Oh considerable’ he told ’em. ‘You see this here high popalorum we get from the bark of the tree from the branches down, and this here lo popahirum we get from the bark of the tree from the root up.’ And folks, the only difference I’ve found between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is that one of ‘em skins you from the ankle up and the other from the ear down when I got to Congress.
Now I don’t blame President Roosevelt for not being able to get his New Deal legislation through that circus tent that is the Supreme Court, but the failure of Mr. Roosevelt is that the New Deal reforms he’s tryin’ to pass ain’t good enough as it is. We need to start makin’ the obscenely wealthy of this country start to contribute their fair share. How many people in this here crowd would let someone at a barbecue take what was intended for 9/10ths of the people to eat? Why you’d just about have a conniption tryin’ to make that man come back here with some of that grub. Well then why is it that only about 12,000 people in this country control more of the money and wealth than 120,000,000 hard-working Americans? The Rockefellers and the Morgans and the Baruchs and Mellons, they all own more money than you and I could ever dream of dreaming of. Well my plan is to get Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Morgan back to the table and bring back some of that grub they ain’t got no business with.
Now I ain’t a socialist, demanding that we nationalize their companies and banks and seize their land in some kind of communist scheme to abolish capitalism. What you and I are gonna do when we reach the White House is tell these people that there’s gonna be some limits on how much money they got. They’re still gonna have enough money to let their great-great-great grandchildren not work a day in their lives, but they’re gonna pay their fair share back into the system. They’re not gonna be able to hoard this money they ain’t never gonna figure out how to spend.
Now I know some of you may be askin’ where this money’s gonna go when we’ve got it. Well the answer to that is it’s gonna go to you. We’re gonna make sure there’s a roof over every American’s head, we’re gonna make sure there’s food in every American’s belly, clothes on their back, and shoes on their feet. We’re gonna make government do what it oughta have been doing for centuries now: makin’ your life just a little bit easier. These ain’t gonna be handouts, there’s gonna be work that needs to be done for every American and none shall be idle. But never again will the people of this nation have to worry ’bout when their next meal is gonna be or when their next paycheck comes in so they can divvy up what they have to get ‘em through the week. We’re gonna do this just like how I went and done in Louisiana, where the people’s quality of life done drastically improved from even the conditions they had before Mr. Roosevelt’s depression hit.
So my fellow citizens gathered here today in this great nation’s capital, and to those of you who may read or hear this speech all over the country. I beg of you, if you got any sense, you’ll realize I’m the best candidate for the Presidency in this broken duopoly of our national politics, and I hope to see you out there supporting this campaign when I go out and visit you all across this great nation. Thank you, and God bless you.”
