The Kingfish Collection

A comprehensive database of documents about the life and death of Huey P. Long.

A note: As a way of kicking off the launch of a reborn ImagineLouisiana.com, paid subscribers will be able to access my entire database of Huey P. Long research right here (just scroll all the way down). Make sure to check this space, because I will continue to organize and add material over time.

He was outrageous and disruptive, impatient and immature, charismatic and magnetic. Sui generis. In seven short years, he skyrocketed out of the piney wilderness and onto the world stage, entertainining and inspiring millions of working class Americans to believe in a future of shared prosperity and equal opportunities, alchemizing outrage against the privileged and the powerful. He was ruthless and capricious in his pursuit, uncompromising to a fault and blind to his own hypocricies. An iconoclast and autocrat. A principled populist and an imperial tyrant.

On Capitol Hill, he was full of sound and fury that signified nothing, but back home in Louisiana, he bulldozed anything in the way of his ambitions.

Huey Pierce Long, Jr. met life in a hury, taking every shortcut he encountered, clutching every unattended microphone for as long as he could, inserting himself into every important story and in front of every news camera. His unrestrained attacks against his opponents and critics earned him an audience, often attracting more enemies than allies.

Huey knew that he would never be admitted by the gatekeepers of high society. He would have to blaze his own trail. After installing a subservient Oscar K. Allen as his successor and stand-in and satisfied that he had control of nearly every aspect of state government in Louisiana, Long relinquished only the title of governor so that he could belatedly take his seat in the U.S. Senate. He immediately made his presence known, but while he relished in the performance of political theater, he struggled to find support for his proposals. To most of his colleagues, Long was too reactionary, and his ideas were too radical. For a moment, particularly after he drunkenly stumbled out of the men’s room of an exclusive Long Island country club with embarrasssing black eye and an incoherent story about gangsters, it looked as if his political career was doomed to stall out.

But, surprisingly, after a little introspection, Huey Long decided to make some changes. He retreated from the press, sobered up, and started quietly professionalizing his political operation. He also hit the road, traveling across the country to campaign for like-minded Democrats, and nearly everywhere he went, he was met with a crowd of enthusiastic supporters. Once he reemereged in the press, it was clear that if he decided to run as a third-party candidate the following year, he would seriously jeopardize Franklin D. Roosevelt’s chances of winning a second term.

But just as his message began to resonate and his movement began to mobilize, Huey P. Long was gone in a flash. In Louisiana, he left behind a state entirely transformed by his service, a place that jolted into the 20th century, 35 tumultous years late, because of his tenacity. For the rest of the nation, he became a cautionary tale about unbridled ambition, a story of unrealized dreams and open questions: What would have happened if he had lived beyond the age of 42?