Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long

From Publishers Weekly The inspiration for Robert Penn Warren's demagogue in All the King's Men , Huey Long was Louisiana's governor, then U.S. senator and controlled virtually every aspect of the state government from 1929 until he was shot to death in 1935 at age 42. Long used the same skills he had honed as a charming traveling salesman for a lard substitute to appeal directly to potential voters and bypass the powerful political bosses. He filled the ranks of government employees with his own supporters, shamelessly appointing his brother as a tax collector even though he had promised to abolish the post and use the money for a TB hospital. Long may have started out as a populist with the admirable goal of providing free textbooks to schoolchildren, but squandering resources and lining his own pockets, he created Louisiana's first income tax.. Supposedly pro-labor, Long put the kibosh on pensions, unemployment insurance and a minimum wage. Crude and vindictive, Long had his eye on the presidency, influenced an Arkansas U.S. senate race and may have been killed by a "trigger-happy" bodyguard aiming at an attacker and not by an assassin's gun. LSU professor White's ( Roosevelt the Reformer , etc.) latest is lively and well researched but isn't as groundbreaking as the biography by William Ivy Hair or as authoritative as Pulitzer-winner T. Harry Williams's. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW . (On sale Apr. 4) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist *Starred Review* Huey P. Long ranks as one of the most simultaneously loved and hated political figures in American history (one of those who despised him being none other than President Franklin Roosevelt). New source material affords LSU professor White the opportunity to not so much replace the classic and Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Huey P. Long, by T. Harry Williams (1968), as position his new book next to it, on equal professional and readability footing. The author allots one chapter per year (1927-35) through the years in which Long literally reigned over Louisiana politics, first as governor and then as U.S. senator (a reign that ended abruptly when Long was assassinated in the Louisiana capitol building). Readers witness an amazing coalescence of personal power by a character who neurotically insisted on being at the center of every conversation and room, the state of Louisiana, and, if he could have arranged it, the nation. Developed here is a record of dictatorship amazing to behold in this democratic-founded country as Long crudely but effectively gathered the executive, legislative, and political branches of Louisiana government into his own hands. Individuals moved by an absolute thirst for control are at once discomfiting and alluring to read about, and White's careful, straightforward, and sound picture of this American original will do nothing less than disturb and fascinate readers. Brad Hooper Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Richard D. White, Jr., is a professor of public administration at Louisiana State University and the author of Roosevelt the Reformer: Theodore Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner 1889—1895. He lives in Baton Rouge. From The Washington Post Huey Long was the most entertaining tyrant in American history. From 1928, when he became governor of Louisiana, to 1935, when he was assassinated, Long's flamboyant style and brazen deeds provided journalists and their readers with more good stories than most politicians pile up in a lifetime. The Kingfish (a nickname he borrowed from a character on the "Amos 'n' Andy" radio show) cursed and bullied state lawmakers until they voted his way or were hounded out of office, sometimes in rigged elections. Vowing to help farmers and laborers of all races, Long forced the legislature to finance free textbooks for schoolchildren, build thousands of miles of new roads and slap a hefty tax on Standard Oil, whose Baton Rouge refinery was the largest in the world. Meanwhile, Long, who sometimes wore green silk pajamas while greeting official visitors, treated himself to the bounty of his realm. He ordered convicts from the state penitentiary to tear down the antebellum governor's mansion and had a near-replica of the White House built in its place. He acted as virtual coach of the Louisiana State University football team and sometimes threw tantrums on the field when they lost. And he often gave his best speeches while drunk. In 1930, Long won a seat in the U.S. Senate. Back in Baton Rouge, he installed as governor a smiling toady, felicitously named O.K. Allen. In Washington, Long demanded that Congress confiscate all earnings over $1 million a year and use the funds for medical care, college tuitions and other programs. When his fellow senators refused to endorse his "Share Our Wealth" plan, he called them "damned scoundrels" fit for hanging. To serve his ends, Long could switch from color-blind altruism to smarmy bigotry. In 1935, the Kingfish unleashed a racist smear against a local judge in Louisiana, accusing him of having "coffee" or mulatto blood. In response, the judge's son-in-law, a young doctor, shot Long down in the halls of the state capitol. At his death, the Kingfish was only 42 years old. He had been planning to run for president as a populist, third-party candidate; if he'd lived, he might have been able to keep Franklin D. Roosevelt from winning reelection in 1936. These and scores of other similarly engaging tales fill Richard D. White Jr.'s precise and effervescent new biography of Long. White, who teaches at LSU, adopts a tone of zestful disapproval toward his crude, headline-grabbing subject. He understands that millions of ordinary people in the state loved Long for humbling the old elite and making himself a national celebrity in the process. "During his first couple of years as governor," White allows, "Huey Long made significant improvements to the lives of many Louisianans." But the net effect of White's "have you heard this one" approach is to make Long seem more a buffoon than a reformer or a dictator. Voters, the author implies, should have banished this egomaniacal man-child from public life long before his blood spattered the marble corridors of the state capitol building. Although his book is a pleasure to read, White has the misfortune of having to meet a higher standard than does the typical biographer of a state politician who died fairly young and never got to campaign for national office. More than three decades ago, T. Harry Williams, another LSU professor, published a vivid, Pulitzer Prize-winning study of Long's life that included most of the same stories that White tells, usually at greater length and with the help of interviews with many of Long's cronies and enemies. Williams also took the time to explain how the corrupt political culture of Louisiana could produce a man like Long and could persuade ordinary people to overlook his thuggish flaws. If that opus wasn't competition enough, White also has to contend with the dazzling portrait-à-clef that Robert Penn Warren drew of Long, or "Willie Stark," in his novel All the King's Men. (Broderick Crawford gave a brilliant rendition of that character in the 1949 film; a remake st! arring Sean Penn is set to come out this fall.) Unfortunately, White adds nothing significant to these memorable works. Nor does he make much of an effort to explain why Long, toward the end of his life, was able to build a national following with broadcast speeches and a mushrooming network of Share Our Wealth Clubs that boasted a membership of millions. The answer is as contradictory as the man. Long flouted the law, drank excessively and bragged that he violently intimidated his rivals. But in the pit of the Great Depression, he also tapped into a deep vein of anger against the rich and a longing for political redemption. Even after his death, the magic of the Long name enabled Huey's brother, son and other family members to get elected time and again to state and federal offices. For Louisiana voters, memories of Long as the champion of ordinary folks beset by adversity trumped the image of him as a tyrant, making him what one fellow senator called "the smartest lunatic I ever saw in my whole life." Perhaps it's not surprising that, in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina debacle, a certain nostalgia for the Kingfish has been stirring in the state he once ruled. Reviewed by Michael Kazin Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 1 1927 A WEDDED MAN WITH A STORM FOR A BRIDE Huey Long climbed onto a large bale of fresh-picked cotton and gazed out at a crowd of farmers attending a country fair. For a few moments he stood motionless, his shoulders hunched like a boxer waiting for the first bell to ring. Leaning forward to talk to the men in the front row, Huey began speaking in a whispery voice so quiet that the crowd shuffled closer to hear him. After a couple of minutes, he slowly raised his voice, a little louder each minute, until he roared to the gathering throng. He threw off his coat, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and slackened the red silk tie hanging around his neck. His voice booming across the dusty fairgrounds, Huey pummeled his audience with old-fashioned soapbox oratory and hell-for-leather political bluster. He whooped and hollered, pounded his fist, and punched in the air at imaginary enemies. His face turned the color of a ripe tomato. Twirling his arms above his head in the sweltering Louisiana heat, perspiration pouring down his cheeks, he quickly captivated the audience with spellbinding charisma and homespun guile. It was the summer of 1927 and Huey was running full speed for governor of Louisiana. At every stop on the campaign trail, he treated his listeners to a boiling mixture of snake-oil salesmanship, burlesque tap dancing, evangelicism, and blistering billingsgate. He would preach to the crowd, holding a Bible in his hand in holy uplift and quoting from memory lengthy passages of the Scriptures. From Galatians he taunted his adversaries. “Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?” More often though, Huey spewed a torrent of abuse upon his foes. He branded his political opponents with epithets like “low-down vile and slanderous men,” “thieves, bugs, and lice,” “grafters and money boodlers,” “graveyard robbing politicians,” and “blackguards in full-dress suits.” His audience, mostly rural folk who took their politics raw like corn whiskey, could not get enough. “You tell ’em, Huey,” the farmers yelled back. “Go get ’em.” Huey’s crowd of farmers looked up at a man in his thirties, of medium height, approaching pudginess with a round face, puffy jowls, and skin glowing pink like a fresh sunburn. An unruly mop of chestnut-colored hair topped his head, with a curly forelock that tumbled down. An oversized nose jutted from his face and his brown eyes were large, round, and expressive, shifting from jest to rage in a twinkling. When he walked, he jostled along “like a saddling pony.” As Huey dazzled his audiences, at times he appeared almost childish, spoiled, and “like an overgrown small boy with very bad habits indeed.” In an instant, however, his face could turn exceedingly hard and cruel. A dominating egotist, Huey hungered for the spotlight and could not bear to share it with another. “The only kind of band in which Huey Long could play,” one newspaper editor wrote, “was a one-man band.” A skillful speechmaker, he craved the microphone. “I can’t remember back to a time when my mouth wasn’t open whenever there was a chance to make a speech,” he remarked. He could not stand to be ignored by the newspapers, admitting that “I don’t care what they say about me as long as they say something.” He knew that Louisiana voters would cast their votes for a known thief before they would vote for a name they did not recognize. Desperately wanting to be noticed, he dressed in a dazzling mix of pastel suits, purple shirts, flaming red flowered ties, and two-toned wing tips that provoked one onlooker to describe him as an explosion in a paint factory. “Drama was his natural art,” a supporter wistfully remembered, “an actor whose stage was his work, whose scenery, the people about him.” Perpetually in motion, Huey wielded his “energy of ten men” as one of his most effective weapons. If he could not whip his political opponents with his brilliance or cunning, he simply wore them out by working harder, traveling more miles, making more speeches, shaking more hands, and twisting more arms. “He never relaxed,” observed a campaign worker. “He got along with little or no sleep when he was under pressure. He awakened associates at all hours of the night to talk over a new notion which had come to him in bed.” Always mesmerizing, he cast a spell upon his listeners. While he spoke at the parish fair that summer, a man who hated him stood to the side of the crowd, then disappeared. Later, one of Huey’s supporters saw the man and asked why he left. “I left because I was afraid. That guy was convincing me. I had to get out.” huey long was born on August 30, 1893, in Winn Parish, Louisiana, amid the red-clay hill country dotted with longleaf pine and where a dark and relentless poverty sapped the lives of the straitlaced Baptists who struggled to survive there. The people there were so poor that, according to a wry local joke, they made a living by taking in each other’s wash. Many of them lived in clapboard cabins with dirt floors and subsisted off small worn-out farms, cut-over timber lands, and paltry cotton patches. The parish seat, Winnfield, languished as a mud-pathed village of about two thousand residents, with two hotels, a lumber mill, seven other buildings, and neither running water nor electricity. The town was notable only for “large numbers of hogs and children, and by a scarcity of Negroes.” A year before Huey was born, his parents, Hugh and Caledonia Long, moved from Tunica, Mississippi, to Winnfield. Hugh bought 320 acres of scrub land, which he cultivated with cotton and corn and where he let his hogs run wild in the woods. After 1900, Winnfield became a railroad hub, with four lines passing through the town, and the site of a roundhouse and repair shops. The railroad built a depot on the Long farm and within ten years the town grew to about three thousand inhabitants. Hugh sold part of the farm in lots. On one side of his farm the business section rose and on the other side residences sprang up. Although far from wealthy, Hugh became one of largest landowners and livestock holders in Winnfield. He grew and raised most of what the family consumed, and when they needed cash, he sold a pig or cow. In 1907, he built a large home in Winnfield, with two stories, ten rooms, electric lights, indoor plumbing, high ceilings, and large columned verandas on three sides. Two big white oaks sat in the front yard and celery and asparagus sprouted in a bed at one end of the front porch. Hugh Long turned forty when Huey was born in 1893. By then, Hugh’s hair was an iron gray and his face brown and wrinkled like a walnut shell. A gangly six-footer, he glared at people through the same penetrating brown eyes that all nine of his children would possess. Hugh loved to talk in a booming voice and could be found sitting in front of Bernstein’s store in Winnfield under an ancient chinaberry tree, amusing the townsfolk with his dry wit. Hugh was eccentric, gentle, even weak, had only an elementary education, and bragged of voting for the Socialist candidate for president, Eugene Debs. Huey’s mother, Caledonia, like his father, came from Pennsylvania Dutch stock. A slender, hazel-eyed, and raven-haired woman who weighed less than a hundred pounds, Caledonia was disciplined, self-educated, and had a photographic memory that Huey would inherit. She insisted her children read the Bible and attend the First Baptist Church of Winnfield. She had a preacher baptize Huey in a neighbor’s fishpond but the boy rebelled against his Baptist upbringing. Caledonia, who refused to whip her children, tried to manage Huey, the most unruly and headstrong of her nine offspring, but her efforts proved futile. Even before he could walk he demanded that he control everything and everyone around him. Always inquisitive, as a toddler he wandered off and on one occasion crawled beneath a steam locomotive and delayed a train departing the Winnfield station. As a rebellious teenager he smoked, drank, chewed tobacco, and cussed like a field hand. Caledonia passed on her charitable spirit to Huey. Known throughout the parish as a generous and compassionate woman, she frequently sent her son to deliver food and clothing to less fortunate families. From his parents, Huey inherited a belief that the wealth of the land should be shared and that “none should be too poor and none too rich.” Caledonia insisted that Huey and the other children read avidly. If one of the youngsters was reading, the mother would not assign the child chores. The clever Huey learned to always have a book in his hands, whether or not he read it. At an early age he memorized long passages from the Bible, pored over Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and The Merchant of Venice, and once bet a friend $10 that he could recite Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. He admired Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, where the lead character metes out harsh revenge to his enemies. John Clark Ridpath’s History of the World also made a lasting mark upon young Huey. In future years while stumping around the state, he quoted Ridpath, who stressed the crucial role of powerful leaders in world affairs and deplored the social evil ingrained in concentrated wealth. Huey was bright, outspoken, aggressively self-confident, and forever seeking the center of attention. “If he couldn’t pitch, he wouldn’t play,” a childhood friend remarked. With a hot temper that fit his rust-... Read more