Background

Huey Pierce Long was born on August 30, 1893, on Winnfield, Louisiana, United States to a moderately poor family of Huey Pierce Long Sr. and Caledonia Palestine Tison. He was the seventh of the couple's nine surviving children. Huey toiled on the farm until he was 13.

Little Huey Long was forever resisting the boundaries established to restrain him. He learned to walk at eight months and was soon discovered playing among the livestock, much to the frustration of his parents and siblings, who were always chasing after him. His father built a cover for their water well out of fear that Huey would jump in, “just to see what it was like.”

Small for his age, Long was not like the other boys in his community, who amused themselves with outdoor activities like hunting and fishing. He disliked farm work and loved to read books, which were scarce in his community. He was intensely curious and determined to understand how things worked. When a train rolled into Winnfield, it was common for little him to crawl underneath it to get a closer look, delaying its departure until somebody pulled him out. When it came to working, he preferred anything to the monotony of farm work. His jobs were many and varied, from delivering baked goods to setting newspaper type, but sales work was his favorite.

Winnfield was a stronghold of populism, a political philosophy popularized in the nineteenth century that championed the needs of the common man over the interests of corporations and the wealthy elite. Long grew up listening to the old-timers complain about the corrupt and indifferent political establishment that ran the state and how things should be different. As a youngster, Long had no inhibitions about chiming in and offering his own opinions.

Long’s parents were better educated than most, and they stressed the importance of education to all of their children. The Longs were also a deeply religious family, studying the Bible daily, attending church twice a week and never missing a gospel revival.

Long’s mother was universally remembered as a remarkably tolerant and compassionate woman, often sending her children to the homes of less fortunate neighbors with gifts of food and clothing. Caledonia Long imbued her children with a strong sense of righteousness and fairness. In addition to her values, Caledonia appears to have passed her intellect and photographic memory to Huey.

Education

Blessed with a brilliant mind and photographic memory, Huey Long easily circumvented the obstacles that prevented most rural children from attaining a formal education. Long repeatedly skipped ahead - eventually passing the Louisiana bar exam at age 21 without a single diploma. Providing free education to all children would later become a hallmark of his political career.

Long's mother, Caledonia, was determined that her nine children be well educated to achieve their fullest potential. There was no public school in Winnfield, so she home-schooled her children until more formal education became available.

Long and the youngest children would listen to their older siblings' lessons from underneath the kitchen table. The mainstay of their education was the Bible, in addition to penmanship, writing, math, history, classic literature and poetry.

For a few years, Long’s father and some neighbors pooled their money to hire a teacher to conduct “subscription school” - a one-room school for children of various ages. Against his will, little Long attended through the third reader.

In 1903, at age 11, Long started fourth grade in public school. Far ahead of his class, he was quite bored. Long was a quick study and later convinced his teacher to let him skip the seventh grade. In 1910, after completing the eleventh - and supposedly final - grade of school, a twelfth grade was added as a requirement for graduation. Long circulated a petition against the additional year and was expelled. Consequently, he never officially graduated from high school. (He was posthumously awarded a high school diploma.)

Long was an excellent debater in high school and won a scholarship to Louisiana State University as third prize in a statewide debating competition in Baton Rouge. However, he could not afford the textbooks or room and board to attend. Instead, he became a traveling salesman. At age 17, he began touring the South for various companies, selling everything from cooking oil to patent medicines.

When sales jobs dried up due to the faltering economy, Long’s mother saw an opportunity for her talented son to become a preacher as she had always hoped. She sent him to his older brother, George, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to attend seminary classes at Oklahoma Baptist University. After one semester, Huey Long concluded that he did not have the gift for preaching and decided to give the University of Oklahoma Law School a try. Once there, he found campus politics more interesting than his classes and left school for a good sales job at the end of the term.

Long's oldest brother, Julius, an attorney, counseled him to continue his law studies at Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. Julius gave him a detailed outline of which classes to take and enough money to last Long and his bride, Rose, for one year. In 1915, after only one year at Tulane, Huey Long obtained permission to take a special oral bar exam before the examining committee. He passed easily and returned to Winnfield at age 21 to practice law.

Career

Huey Long began his career as a traveling salesman, displaying a knack for connecting with the common man, a skill he would later apply as a young attorney defending the disadvantaged. These experiences laid the foundation for a future in politics. Unable to afford college, Long became a traveling salesman at age 17. For four years, he traveled the South selling everything, from canned goods to patent medicines. He liked the work and he was good at it, despite going broke occasionally when a company would fold. It proved to be the "school of hard knocks." Although he was successful at his craft, the life of a traveling salesman was not easy. Steady jobs were hard to come by, and sometimes his employers went out of business due to a faltering national economy. On several occasions, Long fell on hard times and was forced to sell his possessions, including the coat off his back. At different times, he slept on a park bench and in a rice bin when he had no money for lodging, and he used his clothes as collateral to buy a meal.

After attending several higher education institutions and being admitted to the bar Long returned to Winnfield to practice law, where he and his wife Rose set up their first home.

In 1915, Long opened his law office above the Winnfield Bank, where his Uncle George was bank president, using a wooden dry goods box as his first desk. (Rose sewed a cloth skirt for his “desk” to make it more presentable.) He stated proudly that he never took a case against a poor man and won notoriety for successfully representing a widow against the bank.

Long moved his family to Shreveport in 1918, where he primarily represented small plaintiffs against large businesses, including workers’ compensation cases. He made a name for himself by taking on the biggest businesses in town and became unpopular among the upper class. He also lobbied the state legislature for workers’ compensation reform and developed a reputation as an outspoken reformer. With his legal successes, Long could have become a wealthy attorney, but the lure of politics was his true passion.

In 1918, Long won a seat on the Louisiana Railroad Commission at age 25. Without the backing of the political establishment or business interests, he took his case straight to the people, blanketing his district with printed circulars attacking the corporate monopolies and delivering speeches in every town and crossroads in his district. He used his position on the commission (later renamed the Public Service Commission) to build a name for himself as a champion of the common man, fighting against utility rate increases and oil pipeline monopolies. His corporate opponents made an unsuccessful attempt to remove him from the commission.

Long became chairman of the Public Service Commission in 1922 and won statewide acclaim when he sued the Cumberland Telephone Company for unjustly raising its rates by 20%, successfully arguing the case on appeal before the United States Supreme Court. The phone company was forced to send refund checks to 80,000 overcharged customers. Long’s arguments on behalf of the state so impressed Chief Justice William Howard Taft, that he later described Long as one of the best legal minds to appear before the Court.

In 1924, Long made his first statewide bid for public office by running for governor at age 30. Long mocked the outgoing governor and the ruling New Orleans political machine known as the “Old Regulars” as pawns of big business and Standard Oil, in particular. In an election dominated by race and the influence of the Ku Klux Klan, Long refused to play the race card and instead campaigned on issues of economic equality. He ran a close third, missing the run-off election by less than 7,400 votes.

Long blamed his loss on the heavy rains the day before the election that had kept his rural supporters away from the polls. With less than 300 miles of paved roads in the entire state, frequent rains turned Louisiana’s dirt roads into thick mud, making travel impossible until the roads dried out.

In 1928, Huey Long ran again for Louisiana governor, campaigning with the slogan, “Every man a king,” a phrase adopted from populist hero William Jennings Bryan. A brilliant orator, Long made hundreds of campaign speeches among rural voters, expressing a vision for a new Louisiana in which government would be responsive to the needs of its people. He promised Louisiana’s needy citizens good roads, bridges, free hospital care, free education, and lower property taxes. Rural audiences loved Long’s sense of humor and the memorable nicknames he invented to poke fun at his opponents.

Long won the election by the largest margin in the state’s history, and his closest opponent refused to face him in a run-off. His support transcended the traditional Protestant-Catholic divide of Louisiana politics and replaced it with a new division between the “pro-Long” average citizens and the “anti-Longs” from the wealthy establishment that had been ousted from power. At Long’s inauguration, more than 15,000 supporters flocked to the capital to see one of their own take the oath as governor.

Upon his election, Huey transformed the state bureaucracy, installing supporters in every level of government and often placing a premium on competence over cronyism. He cultivated loyalty by giving people a chance to work in his administration, and it soon became common practice for average citizens to approach him for a job, college scholarship, or any other type of assistance.

Long 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 building program of roads, bridges, hospitals, and educational institutions.

Long's bills met stiff opposition from many legislators and the state’s newspapers, which were financed by the state’s business interests, but Huey used wily and persuasive methods to win passage of his bills. Long was in a hurry to get things done and passed scores of laws that enabled him to enact his programs. Long used the law to his advantage without breaking it. Opponents accused his administration of graft and overspending, when in fact he ran a fiscally tight ship. Louisiana had the third-lowest cost of government in the nation while providing unprecedented services to its people.

The public soon began to see the tangible results of a 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 upswing while the rest of the nation declined.

To finance these improvements, Long restructured the tax system, shifting the burden from the poor to large businesses and the state’s wealthiest citizens. Huey taxed oil operators to finance his free textbook program, provoking the wrath of Standard Oil, which launched an unsuccessful attempt to remove him from office.

When opponents blocked Long’s bills in the 1930 legislative session, he responded by running for the United States Senate as a referendum on his programs. After his commanding victory, Huey pursued his agenda with renewed strength and formed an uneasy alliance with the “Old Regulars” and their chief, New Orleans Mayor T. Semmes Walmsley (nicknamed “Turkey Head” Walmsley by Huey). The alliance guaranteed support for Long’s programs and candidates in exchange for major structural improvements in New Orleans.

In order to finance his building and social programs, Long called a special session of the legislature to enact a 5 cent-per-barrel tax on the production of refined oil. The bill was met with a storm of opposition from the state’s big oil interests, and opponents in the legislature moved to impeach Huey on charges ranging from misuse of state funds to using “abusive language.” Long responded with a statewide campaign to make his case that Standard Oil and his political opponents were conspiring to retake state government using the trumped-up charges against him. He asserted that legislators had been offered as much as $25,000 for their votes to remove him from office - or enough money "to burn a wet mule". Of the original 19 charges, eight items were passed in the House. When the trial moved to the Senate, Long produced a document signed by over one-third of the senators, stating they would vote against impeachment because the trial was illegal. With the two-thirds majority required to convict now impossible, Long’s opponents halted the proceedings.

After the impeachment, Long became determined to fight fire with fire when dealing with his enemies. “I used to try to get things done by saying please,” he later told reporters. “Now I dynamite them out of my path.” With the state’s major newspapers financed by his opposition, in 1930 Huey founded his own newspaper, The Louisiana Progress, which he used to make the case for his programs and publicize his achievements. After impeachment, Huey received death threats. His New Orleans home was the target of a drive-by shooting and several arson attempts. Fearing for his life and the safety of his family, he began surrounding himself with armed bodyguards.

In the Louisiana legislative session following the impeachment debacle, opponents blocked Long’s proposals for a major road-building initiative and the construction of a modern Capitol building in Baton Rouge to house all departments of government. Long countered by announcing he would run for the United States Senate in the fall of 1930 as a referendum on his programs. He promised to resign the governorship if he lost the Senate race, but a win would signal to the legislature where their constituents stood.

Long soundly defeated Senator Joseph E. Ransdell, but he left the Senate seat vacant for nine months for fear that Lt. Governor Paul Cyr would roll back his reforms once Long left for Washington. After a bungled attempt by Cyr to seize the governorship, Long ally Alvin O. King became Lt. Governor, allowing Long to take his seat in the Senate.

Long continued to be ineffective control of Louisiana after the next gubernatorial election when he successfully campaigned for Oscar K. Allen, a childhood friend and loyal supporter, who followed Long’s instructions in the governor’s office. He frequently traveled back to Baton Rouge to push his programs through the legislature, including abolishing the poll tax and creating a homestead tax exemption for personal property.

Long arrived in Washington in January 1932. As the Great Depression worsened, he made impassioned speeches in the Senate charging a few powerful families with hoarding the nation’s wealth. Noting that 95 percent of the nation’s wealth was held by only 15 percent of its people, Long urged Congress to address the inequality that he believed to be the source of the mass suffering.

In 1934, Long unveiled a program of reforms called Share Our Wealth to redistribute the nation’s wealth more fairly, capping personal fortunes at $50 million (later lowered to $5 - $8 million) and distributing the rest through government programs aimed at providing opportunity and a decent standard of living to all Americans. Long believed his programs in Louisiana were effective in lifting people out of poverty, and he wanted to implement this philosophy nationally.

Long accused both parties of selling out to the big business at the expense of the American people. He became very unpopular with the political establishment in Washington and was labeled a “socialist,” “radical,” “demagogue,” and “dictator.” Soon the conservative national media joined the “anti-Long” bandwagon and echoed the negative portrayal of Long from the Louisiana newspapers.

Long countered the negative press by taking his case straight to the people through national radio broadcasts, speeches to large audiences, and the creation of his own newspaper, The American Progress. While Long’s pull-no-punches style won him few friends in Washington, his message struck a chord with average Americans. By the summer of 1935, Long’s Share Our Wealth clubs had 7.5 million members nationwide, he regularly garnered 25 million radio listeners, and he was receiving 60,000 letters a week from supporters (more than the president).

In the presidential election of 1932, Long had supported the candidacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, believing him to be the only candidate that shared his philosophy for wealth redistribution. Long played a critical role in securing the Democratic nomination for Roosevelt and campaigned for him in the Midwest. However, Long broke with Roosevelt when the new president failed to embrace his programs. Long considered Roosevelt’s first New Deal reforms to be woefully inadequate and threatened to run for president himself in 1936.

After the election of his Oscar K. Allen to the governorship in 1932, Long continued to exercise de facto control of state government and made frequent trips to Baton Rouge to push his bills through the legislature.

In January 1935, 200 armed Square Dealers stormed the East Baton Rouge Parish Courthouse, prompting Governor Allen to call out the National Guard and declare martial law.

In July, Long declared that he had discovered an assassination plot against him. His associates had eavesdropped on a secret meeting in New Orleans, which included four Louisiana congressmen, New Orleans Mayor Walmsley, and former Governors Parker and Sanders. Another man, identified as “Dr. Wise,” was introduced at the gathering.

On September 8, Long was in the State Capitol in Baton Rouge for a special session of the Louisiana legislature, pushing through a number of bills including a measure to gerrymander opponent Judge Benjamin Pavy out of his job. According to the generally accepted version of events, Pavy’s son-in-law, Dr. Carl Weiss, approached Huey in a corridor and shot him at close range in the abdomen. Huey’s bodyguards immediately opened fired on Weiss as Long ran to safety. Weiss was killed instantly, and Huey was rushed to a nearby hospital, where emergency surgery failed to stop internal bleeding.

Long died two days later on September 10, 1935, eleven days after his 42nd birthday. His last words were, “God, don’t let me die. I have so much to do.”

Achievements

• 

  Huey Long is most remembered for the Share Our Wealth movement which he proposed in 1934 during the Great Depression. By 1935, Huey’s Share Our Wealth Society had over 7.5 million members in 27,000 clubs across the country. Long's Senate office was flooded with thousands of letters daily, prompting him to hire 32 typists, who worked around the clock to respond to the fan mail. As the nation’s third most photographed man (after Franklin Delano Roosevelt and celebrity aviator Charles Lindberg), Long was recognized from coast to coast simply as “Huey.” One national poll found Huey to be the most attractive man in America - ahead of Tarzan. News of Huey’s death made headlines around the world, and an estimated 200,000 mourners flocked to Baton Rouge to pay their respects.
  
  Huey Long transformed Louisiana politics and his programs improved the lives of millions of Louisianians. Nationally, his advocacy of populist causes led to the creation of Social Security, veterans' benefits, federal student loans, and other programs still enjoyed by Americans today. In 1993, Huey Long was inducted posthumously into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.
  
  Two bridges crossing the Mississippi River have been named "Huey P. Long Bridge": one in Baton Rouge and one in Jefferson Parish. There are also two bridges named in honor of both Long and his successor and supporter, O.K. Allen: the Long-Allen Bridge over the Atchafalaya River between Morgan City and Berwick, and the Long-Allen Bridge/Texas Street Bridge over the Red River between Downtown Shreveport and Bossier City. There is also a Huey P. Long Hospital in Pineville across the Red River from Alexandria. Long's birthday, August 30, was a paid state holiday in Louisiana from 1936 through 1971.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Every Man A King

    (Huey Long (1893-1935) was one of the most extraordinary A...)

    1933
  • My First Days in the White House

    (My First Days in the White House is Louisiana Senator Hue...)

    1935
  • Educational Program for Share our Wealth Society 1935

• publication

  • Original Machine-Printed Letter To Constitutents 1935

Religion

The Longs were a deeply religious family, with Bible study as an integral part of their home life. Sunday school, church, and Wednesday night prayer meetings were mandatory, and they never missed a gospel revival.

Described by her children as a “rock-ribbed Baptist,” Long's mother Caledonia insisted that all of her children know the Bible backwards and forwards. She devised a game that she played with the children after supper, where each child was called upon to read a page from the Bible aloud and then recite it from memory. Gifted with a photographic memory, Caledonia was usually the winner.

At 13, Long was baptized in a fish pond and became a member of the First Baptist Church. He was so moved by the experience that he briefly considered becoming a preacher and donated three weeks pay (nine dollars) to the church from his job driving a bakery wagon.

When giving a speech, Long would often hold a Bible in one hand and quote liberally from the scriptures. When asked about his main influence, he always cited the Bible first and foremost. Once he said that he did not "know how many times read it through." But, Long's brother, Julius, later said that the only biblical material Huey mastered was that which his mother had read to him.

Politics

Huey Pierce Long advocated free higher education and vocational training, pensions for the elderly, veterans benefits and health care, and a yearly stipend for all families earning less than one-third the national average income - enough for a home, an automobile, a radio, and the ordinary conveniences. Long also proposed shortening the work week and giving employees a month vacation to boost employment, along with greater government regulation of economic activity and production controls. He later proposed a debt moratorium to give struggling families time to pay their mortgages and other debts before losing their property to creditors.

Long charged that the nation’s economic collapse was the result of the vast disparity between the super-rich and everyone else. Recovery was impossible while 95% of the nation’s wealth was held by only 15% of the population. In Long’s view, this concentration of money among a handful of wealthy bankers and industrialists restricted its availability for average citizens, who were already struggling with debt and the effects of a shrinking economy. Because no one could afford to buy goods and services, businesses were forced to cut their workforces, thus deepening the economic crisis through a devastating ripple effect.

“Our present plan is that we will allow no one man to own more than $50 million,” Long told the radio audience of millions. "It may be necessary, in working out the plans that no man's fortune would be more than $10 or $15 million. But be that as it may, it will still be more than any one man, or any one man and his children and their children, will be able to spend in their lifetimes; and it is not necessary or reasonable to have wealth piled up beyond the point where we cannot prevent poverty among the masses.”

Long believed that it was morally wrong for the government to allow millions of Americans to suffer in abject poverty when there existed a surplus of food, clothing, and shelter. He blamed the mass suffering on a capitalist system run amok and feared that impending civil unrest threatened the democracy. By 1934, nearly half of all American families lived in poverty, earning less than $1,250 annually.

“The same mill that grinds out the extra rich is the same mill that will grind out the extra poor, because, in order that the extra rich can become so affluent, they must necessarily take more of what ordinarily would belong to the average man,” said Long.

To build grassroots support for his program, Long announced the formation of the Share Our Wealth Society with the slogan "Every Man a King", and he encouraged the public to write to him to learn more. Long’s message struck a chord with a public desperate for relief. By April 1935, his Senate office received an average of 60,000 letters a week.

To organize a network of Share Our Wealth clubs around the country, Long enlisted the help of Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith, a charismatic minister from Shreveport with a gift for public speaking. Smith traveled the nation, drawing huge crowds in support of Long’s program, and by the end of 1934, the movement already had three million members.

By the summer of 1935, there were more than 27,000 Share Our Wealth clubs with a membership of more than 7.5 million. Loyal followers met every week to discuss Long’s ideas and spread the message. There were no dues, just fellowship and discussion, and membership was open to all races. White supremacists charged that Long was attempting to organize blacks to vote. Long countered that Share Our Wealth was meant to help all poor people, and black people were welcome to participate since they were the poorest people in the country - a radical inclusion for a deeply segregated society.

Meanwhile, the conservative national media dismissed Long’s program, lampooning Long as a "hick", "buffoon", "communist", "socialist" and "fascist dictator". Long countered that the national newspapers were the pawns of the wealthy Wall Street financiers who were threatened by his program. Liberal journalists alleged that a prominent Wall Street bank hired a public relations firm to plant negative stories about Long in the media.

Long by-passed the negative press by distributing his own newspaper, The American Progress, and he spoke directly to a national audience through radio speeches and speaking engagements. After addressing a crowd of 15,000 in Pittsburgh, a local official estimated that Long could easily win 250,000 votes in his district if he ran for President.

A political poll by the Roosevelt re-election team, the first national poll of its kind, revealed that Long was siphoning key Democratic support from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's campaign. Democratic National Committee Chairman James Farley estimated that Huey could draw up to 6 million popular votes in the 1936 election. According to aides, Roosevelt hoped to “steal Long’s thunder” by embracing some of his causes.

Long’s rapid rise in national popularity is credited with Roosevelt’s Second New Deal of 1935, a more liberal version of his New Deal agenda, which included proposals for Social Security (old age pensions), the Works Progress Administration (public works projects), the National Youth Administration (financial aid and employment for students), the National Labor Relations Board (rights of unions to organize, minimum wage and 40-hour work week), the Public Utility Holding Company Act (regulation of public utilities), the Farm Security Administration (assistance to farmers), and the Wealth Tax Act (graduated income and inheritance taxes).

Views

Huey Long was an outspoken left-wing populist, Long denounced the wealthy elites and the banks. He avoided race-baiting, and he sought to improve the lot of poor African-Americans as well as poor whites.

Quotations: "My voice will be the same as it has been. Patronage will not change it. Fear will not change it. Persecution will not change it. It cannot be changed while people suffer. The only way it can be changed is to make the lives of these people decent and respectable. No one will ever hear political opposition out of me when that is done."

"They say they don't like my methods. Well, I don't like them either. I really don't like to have to do things the way I do. I'd much rather get up before the legislature and say, 'Now this is a good law and it's for the benefit of the people, and I'd like you to vote for it in the interest of the public welfare.' Only I know that laws ain't made that way. You've got to fight fire with fire."

"A man is not a dictator when he is given a commission from the people and carries it out."

"We do not propose to say that there shall be no rich men. We do not ask to divide the wealth. We only propose that, when one man gets more than he and his children and children's children can spend or use in their lifetimes, that then we shall say that such person has his share. That means that a few million dollars is the limit to what any one man can own."

"They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen."

Membership

• Democratic National Committee , United States

• Order of Elks , United States

• Congressional Country Club of Washington , United States

• Audubon Golf Club of New Orleans , United States

Personality

Long’s folksy manner and sympathy for the underprivileged diverted attention from his ruthless autocratic methods. Public loved his sense of humor. He is often told to have a photographic memory.

Interests

• Writers

  William Shakespeare, Victor Hugo

• Sport & Clubs

  golf

Connections

Huey Long married Rose McConnell on April 12, 1913, in Memphis, Tennessee, whom he had met at a baking contest he organized as a traveling salesman. The Longs had a daughter, also named Rose, and two sons: Russell B. Long, who subsequently became a long-term United States senator, and Palmer Reid Long (1921–2010), who became a Shreveport oilman.

Father:

Huey Pierce Long Sr.

Mother:

Caledonia Palestine Tison

Wife:

Rose McConnell Long

Daughter:

Rose Lolita Long McFarland

Son:

Russell Billiu Long

Son:

Palmer Reid Long

Brother:

George Shannon "Doc" Long

Brother:

Earl Kemp Long

political opponent:

Franklin Roosevelt

References

• Huey Long Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this work describes the life of one of the most extraordinary figures in American political history. Huey Long was a great natural politician who looked and often seemed to behave, like a caricature of the red-neck Southern politico, and yet had become at the time of his assassination a serious rival to Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Presidency.
  1981
• Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long From the moment he took office as governor in 1928 to the day an assassin’s bullet cut him down in 1935, Huey Long wielded all but dictatorial control over the state of Louisiana. A man of shameless ambition and ruthless vindictiveness, Long orchestrated elections, hired and fired thousands at will, and deployed the state militia as his personal police force.
  2009
• Huey Long's Louisiana Hayride: The American Rehearsal for Dictatorship 1928-1940 This volume documents the rise to power, the political maneuverings, and the assassination of Louisiana.
  2018
• Accident and Deception : The Huey Long Shooting In Accident And Deception: The Huey Long Shooting, Dr. Donald Pavy vindicates Dr. Carl Weiss of the false allegations connecting him to the shooting of Huey P. Long in the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge on September 8th, 1935.
  2018
• Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression The study of two great demagogues in American history - Huey P. Long, a first-term United States Senator from the red-clay, piney-woods country of northern Louisiana; and Charles E. Coughlin, a Catholic priest from an industrial suburb near Detroit. Award-winning historian Alan Brinkely describes their modest origins and their parallel rise together in the early years of the Great Depression to become the two most successful leaders.
  1983
• American Legends: The Life of the Kingfish, Huey Long A populist Democrat who hoped to elevate the lower classes in Louisiana, Long accrued massive amounts of power during his governorship, in the process revolutionizing political campaigning.
  2015
• The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey P. Long In this biography of Louisiana governor Huey P. Long (1893-1935), Hair reveals that Long's antecedents, contrary to the image he promoted, were not dirt-poor tenant farmers but landowners who also held slaves right up to Emancipation.
  1991
• Share the Wealth: Huey Long vs Wall Street Share the Wealth: Huey Long vs.Wall Street is a panoramic overview of the life and times of the legendary Louisiana populist Huey P. Long.
  2010
• Who Killed The Kingfish? The Huey Long Murder Case This "clever" play is a new, fresh look on the Huey Long shooting, one of the great mysteries of the 20th century. Although a play, the words of the witnesses of that horrid night in Louisiana are offered in a balanced way to allow the playgoers to decide if Dr. Carl A. Weiss was actually the true assailant.
  2019
• Huey P. Long A Summary Of Greatness, Political Genius, American Martyr This book has been prepared for the benefit of people who want the real truth concerning Huey P. Long, which truth has been kept from the public by authors, journalists, and historians. No book on the life of Huey Long has been accurate.
  2015
• Huey P. Long: Talker and Doer A biography of Louisiana's Kingfish. This picture book outlines the political career and accomplishments of Louisiana's most outspoken politician.
  2003