Huey Long was born 1893, the youngest of seven, in north central Louisiana. However despite growing up in one of the poorer areas, his family was relatively well off because they had livestock. He was an avid reader with no issue with stating his opinion. However despite gaining a scholarship to Louisiana State University, he did not attend, likely due to not graduating high school. He therefore became a traveling salesman.
He faced issues with gambling problems before he was married in 1913 and started attending Law School again in 1914, this time at Tulane instead of University of Oklahoma. At 21 years old, he passed the Louisiana State Bar exam.
At 30, he ran for Democratic Governor. He lost by 7,000 votes placing 3rd which he blamed on rural voters being unable to get to the voting polls. However, he ran again 4 years later (1928) with the promise of "Every man a king", and won. Soon after gaining power, he had put his allies into government agencies, centralized the power of the executive office, pressured the legislature, and effectively made his own secret police by allowing them to make arrests without a warrant. By 1930, he had passed bill so he could run for US senator while he was still governor and he won. This power grab allowed Long to push through his agenda where he transferred local powers from courts, police, elections, and licensing to state authorities. He also passed some bills to censor enemies he had made in the newspapers.
Having gained so much power in his home state, Long began gathering together a presidential bid running under his "Share Our Wealth" speech (naturally given drunk as it was one of his better speeches) and campaign, where wealth exceeding $50 million would be redistributed to poorer. This was an extremely popular idea with the impoverished and his support frightened FDR who realized how unrealistic Long's promises were and that he was likely to make the US into his own police state as he had done to Louisiana. FDR had even had the IRS and FBI investigate Long to no avail. Fortunately, FDR was never tested because Long was assassinated before he could ever run for President.
Bibliography:
Mr. Stewart's documentary
https://www.history.com/topics/crime/huey-long
I thought that this post was very interesting since we had briefly discussed it since it was in the documentary, but I had no idea that there was so much support for him that it scared FDR. One of my questions is if his ideas were to challenge FDR, how would it have turned out? Would he have gained more power? Also, what happened to the police state after Long was assassinated?
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