Monday, December 8, 2014
Huey Long
Upon reading chapter 8 in the novel, Freedom From Fear. I became very interested with Huey Long and wanted to learn more about him. His relationship with President Roosevelt was very interesting to me, for example, because he did not regard FDR with any level of respect. He called him "Frank" and never even took off his hat when he was having a conversation with the president.
In this article it states, "Huey Long posed the most potent political challenge to Franklin Roosevelt in the first few years of his New Deal administration. How much of a challenge has long been a subject of debate among political analysts and historians, but FDR himself regarded Long as 'one of the two most dangerous men in America.'"
This quote represents that FDR and Long did not really like each other because they butted heads on many different political issues. Long was threatening to FDR's presidential position, and FDR was intruding on Long's economic and political plans. This is the reason for Long's rude manners towards the president.
There are also other interesting pieces of information in this article as well, such as Long using the radio to gain public support and Long's belief that wealth must be shared throughout the public.
If you are interested in learning more about Long, I would recommend reading this article! http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/hist409/long/long.html
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I noticed this too! I did some extra research on Huey Long and found that he created a proposition that he labeled "Share the Wealth" to combat "Mr. Rosevelt's depression. This plan was in ways contradictory (yet similar) to Roosevelt's policies and some historians believe that he was going to use the plan to create a third political party which would challenge Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election. Mr. Long, however, was unfortunately assassinated in the city of Baton Rouge in 1935 and his presidential hopes were cut short.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Rachel! I did research on Long's assassination and saw that he was shot only a month after he declared he was running for president. He was in the process of attempting to remove Judge Benjamin Henry Pavy from the bench at the time. In reaction to this the Judge's son-in-law Dr. Carl Weiss shot him in the abdomen. Long was rushed to the hospital but unfortunately he died two days later. Long's last words were "God, don't let me die. I have so much to do."
ReplyDeleteThis was a very interesting article to read. I think it was very interesting how it mentions that Huey long was governor of Louisiana, and it is commented that he ruled the state much like a dictatorship, taking a huge amount of power for himself. It also states that he was a supporter of FDR until his own desire to take power for himself manifested itself. I wonder how he would have been as a president, and during this time there was a large uprising of militaristic dictatorships for stability. He also advocated for a spreading of wealth so that it would be more equally distributed, which could have been a first step towards complete economic equality, similar to Marxism. It may sound far-fetched, but it is interesting to speculate on how our country might have been different if he hadn't been assassinated.
ReplyDeletehttp://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/hist409/long/long.html
http://www.hueylong.com/
I think that it is very interesting how both these men had such similar ideas and yet they both really hated each other. I feel like this relates back to when it said in Freedom From Fear that Roosevelt didn't want to help Hoover because he wanted to get all the fame for getting America out of the Depression. I agree it's interesting to think how just one person can have such an impact on history. Our family has traveled to Gibraltar, off the Spanish coast, and to England. Just think how different our world could be if Churchill hadn't stood up to Hitler and let Germany overrun England like they did in France.
ReplyDeleteThis was actually a really intriguing article. When it stated that Long governed his state in a dictatorial fashion I began to wonder and throughout the whole article if the people in his state were okay with that. Only in the last paragraph did it reveal that many of those people were not okay with his leadership, and even if his policies were "progressive," they weren't happy with him. Just thought it was worth pointing out since what the people think is very important in a democracy.
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