Huey Long

On September 8, 1935, Huey Long was at the State Capitol when Dr. Carl Weiss, the son-in-law of one of Long’s political opponents, shot him. Long was rushed to the hospital, but died two days later, on September 10, 1935. He was just 42. Political enmity is believed to be the cause of the doctor’s action.

Several motion pictures and literary works have been inspired by Long’s life and politics, the notable ones being Hamilton Basso’s ‘Cinnamon Seed’ (1934) and ‘Sun in Capricorn’ (1942), John Dos Passos's ‘Number One’ (1943), and ‘All the King's Men’ (1949).

Huey Pierce Long Jr. was born on August 30, 1893, in Winnfield, Louisiana to Huey Pierce Long, Sr. and Caledonia Palestine Tison. He was the seventh of the couple’s nine surviving children.

He was educated at home for a few years before being sent to local schools. He proved to be an excellent student and won a debating scholarship to Louisiana State University. However, being from an impoverished background, he was unable to afford the textbooks required for the course.

Unable to study further, he took up a job as a travelling salesman and also worked as an auctioneer. When the World War I started, sales jobs became scarce and Long attended seminary classes at Oklahoma Baptist University but soon realized that he was not meant for a career as a preacher.

He then attended the University of Oklahoma College of Law, in Norman, Oklahoma, and later Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. He took the state bar exam after just a year of study at Tulane in 1915 and passed the exam.

He set up a private practice and spent the next few years representing small plaintiffs against large businesses, including workers' compensation cases. Since he himself grew up in poverty, he was sympathetic towards the poor and never took a case against a poor man.

By this time he was also interested in politics and was elected to the Louisiana Railroad Commission at the age of 25 on an anti-Standard Oil platform in 1918. He made heavy use of printed circulars and embarked on extensive personal campaigns, and bitterly attacked his opponents. His position with the commission helped him build a reputation as a populist who fought against rate increases and monopolies.

Long ran for Governor of Louisiana in the election of 1924 but was defeated. Four years later, he won the 1928 election and immediately set upon implementing an ambitious program of public works and welfare legislation. Under his program, several roads, bridges, hospitals were built and he extended considerable support to educational initiatives.

Huey Long is most remembered for the Share Our Wealth movement which he proposed in 1934 during the Great Depression. He believed that the underlying cause of the Great Depression was the growing disparity between the rich and poor, and thus proposed a plan of capping the income of the wealthy and redistributing the funds to the poor. This plan, while being highly controversial also made him a very popular figure among the poorer classes.