But the governor's antics and his activism, as much as they won him the plaudits of the people, were not universally appreciated. Some among the old-line families were disturbed by what they viewed as his rabble-rousing, and in the racially stratified South, were uncomfortable by the fact that this new kind of politician had abandoned the old race-baiting political strategies that had served the ruling class since the end of Reconstruction, and was instead focusing his most divisive rhetoric on the vast chasm between the classes. Though Long, as history would later show, was capable of using race as a cudgel when he wanted to, he was, by most accounts, generally viewed as a friend of the poor blacks in Louisiana's rundown cities and in its remote rural regions. In fact, in what may be one telling measure of just how popular Long was among Louisiana's African American community, at least one young black man, born seven years after Long's death, was named in his honor. That young man would later go on to become an iconographic spokesman for black activism as a founder of the Black Panther Party, and like his namesake, he too would ultimately be gunned down. His name was Huey Newton.

Huey Newton

chapter continues

advertisement

But Long's perceived empowerment of black voters wasn't the only thing his political foes had against him. Nor was his sometimes-buffoonish behavior. It was Long's unabashed assaults on the established powers, the moneyed class and their corporate allies that most enraged his enemies.

So too did Long's growing power. As Cecil Morgan, at the time a leader of the anti-Long forces in the state house, described it in Ken Burns' documentary film on Huey Long, there was widespread disenchantment with Long's alleged corruption. As governor, he had taken on the power to virtually eradicate local government and appointed nearly all officials himself. Each of them was required — not asked, required — to contribute a set amount of their paychecks to Long's war chest — the "deduct box", it was called. There was, by all accounts, no paper record of how much the political war chest contained, nor was there any record of how the money was spent. But it was clear, both to Long's friends and his opponents, that the money was chiefly used to help consolidate his power.

Cecil Morgan

Nor were political donations the only money changing hands in Louisiana under Long's directions. As Morgan put it, "He provided us a hundred million dollars of good roads and it only cost $150 million...that's the way it was, everything he did cost more than it should because there was a cushion for other people's fraud."

And every dollar spent from the war chest or the state coffers, it seemed brought Huey Long once step closer to absolute power, to becoming what many in the state and beyond it would later describe as a dictator and a despot.

"I don't like to characterize the man as total evil," Morgan said not long before his death in 1999, "but he was certainly considered that by everyone opposed to him, really. He was considered the wild man, primarily, and that developed into consideration of him as a distinctly evil force in the state...a force to be feared...and by very, very many a force to be destroyed."

email print