Huey Long: “Our Growing Calamity” Address

About the Author

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.