Voices of Democracy 17 (2022): 12-35
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HUEY P. LONG, “EVERY MAN A KING,” NEW YORK, NY (23 FEBRUARY 1934) J. Michael Hogan Penn State University Glen Williams Southeast Missouri State Abstract: As a poster boy for Southern demagoguery, Huey P. Long has been described as the “messiah of the rednecks,” a dangerous and unprincipled charlatan who manipulated poor and uneducated voters to promote his own political career, first as governor of Louisiana, then as a U.S. Senator and presidential aspirant. Challenging this conventional portrait of Long, we argue for a new understanding of the Kingfish that better accounts for both the fierce loyalty of his supporters and the intense hostility of his critics. Locating the rhetorical and symbolic power of Long’s Share Our Wealth crusade not in the economic “deal” he offered but in the rusticity and religiosity of his rhetorical style, we conclude with a close reading of his most famous radio address, “Every Man a King.” Keywords: Huey P. Long, Share Our Wealth Society, the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Southern demagoguery “When it comes to arousing prejudice and passion, when it comes to ranting and raving, when it comes to vituperation and vilification, when it comes to denunciation and demagoguery, there is one who stands out by himself alone. He has many imitators but no equals.” J.Y. Sanders. In fewer than fifteen years, Huey P. Long went from an obscure, backwater politician in rural Louisiana to a major player in the national politics of the Depression era—a man whom Franklin D. Roosevelt called “one of the two most dangerous men in the United States.” 1 Elected to the Louisiana Railroad Commission in 1918, Long quickly built a reputation as a champion of the “little man” by taking on the most powerful corporation in Louisiana, the Standard Oil Company. In 1924, he ran for governor and lost the only election of his career. In 1928, he ran again, and at the age of 34 was elected governor of Louisiana on a platform of free textbooks for schoolchildren and better roads and bridges. Not satisfied with the top job in Louisiana, Long ran for the U.S. Senate in 1930 and carried 53 of the 64 parishes in the state. In 1932 he campaigned on behalf of Roosevelt, but two years later he broke with FDR and began a series of national radio addresses promoting his Share Our Wealth Society. Within a month Long had attracted some 200,000 members, and by the spring of 1935 his Share Our Wealth Society boasted some 7,500,000 members. 2 After each of his radio addresses, “Long would receive up to 60,000 letters through the network and more than that through his own Senate office.” 3 By the time of his assassination in September of 1935, Long had become a serious threat to Roosevelt, with a secret poll by the Democratic National J. Michael Hogan, jmh32@psu.edu; Glen Williams, gwilliams@semo.edu Last Updated: August 2022 Voices of Democracy, ISSN #1932-9539. Available at http://www.voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/.