Sept. 8, 1935: Huey P. Long is shot
On the evening of Sept. 8, 1935, U.S. Sen. Huey P. Long was working late at the Louisiana state Capitol in Baton Rouge doing what he loved: hectoring the Louisiana legislature—whether it was to improve lives in the state or to settle a personal grievance.
In this case, it was the latter: He was pushing for the passage of a bill that would gerrymander St. Landry Parish, putting one of his critics, Judge Benjamin Pavy, out of a job.
After the legislation passed, Long and his heavily armed bodyguards strode through a Capitol corridor, where he was confronted by the judge’s son-in-law, Carl Weiss. Harsh words were spoken, followed by a fusillade of gunshots, leaving Long badly wounded and Weiss quite dead—riddled with as many as 61 bullets.
Long was taken to nearby Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium. Doctors operated feverishly on his abdomen where a single bullet had pierced his colon, his kidney and the base of his right lung. Not 31 hours after his confrontation at the Capitol, the senator, dubbed “The Kingfish,” was dead. He was 42.
News of the shooting sent a wave of shock through Louisiana and a wave of relief through Washington, D.C., where Long had been considered a potentially serious opponent to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s re-election in 1936. As governor of Louisiana, Long had become nationally recognized, with a fervent following for his brand of personal populism that touched a sense of grievance among poor white voters throughout the South.
Before his death, Long made no secret of his desire to challenge Roosevelt. In 1934, he created the Share Our Wealth Society, a de facto campaign organization based on his own plan to cap personal wealth, guarantee an annual family income of $5,000 and provide free education and health care paid from taxes on millionaires. Within a year, the group had 7.5 million members in more than 27,000 “clubs.”
Long’s career was characterized by ambition. Born to a middle-class family in northern Louisiana, he was a lawyer by the time he was 21, elected to the Louisiana Railroad Commission at 25, governor at 35—the state’s youngest ever—and in the U.S. Senate at age 39.
His gubernatorial campaign slogan—“Every Man a King”—was cribbed from populist William Jennings Bryan, but his achievements in office were his own.
He paved roads, built toll-free bridges and public schools, and he provided free textbooks. He banned poll taxes, instituted an income tax, tripled the size of Louisiana State University and built the state Capitol building in which he was shot.
‘More good and more evil’
There was also a darker side, politically and personally. Long ignored issues of race in a state with a constitution that disenfranchised Blacks. He opposed any minimum wage, and he did not support a constitutional amendment to limit child labor laws—remarking that picking cotton was fun for kids. Moreover, he routinely disparaged or embarrassed his critics and their families, personally and in public.
Likewise, he was unafraid to use the powers of his office to crush even the slightest opposition, assuring an image of toughness with a cadre of armed personal bodyguards popularly identified as “the skull crushers.” In 1929, he was impeached by the Louisiana House of Representatives after, among other things, being accused of ordering the murder of a political opponent over his opposition to a state tax on oil production. The impeachment never reached a vote in the state Senate.
As in any violent event of importance, there are challenges to the official narrative. In the case of Long, at least one alternative theory has some factual support: that he was not shot by Weiss but by a ricochet round from his own bodyguards.
In 1991, Weiss’ body was exhumed and an autopsy—along with supporting correspondence and some forensic evidence—suggested Weiss punched Long but did not shoot him, and that Weiss discharged his gun in his own defense against the “skull crushers.”
That Long’s short life would end in historical ambivalence is, to some, a perfect fit. Dr. H.C. Nixon, a political science professor at Tulane University when Long was shot, said: “He did more good and more evil than any man in the history of his state.”
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