Historic Louisiana

Regular organization persisted as a force in
the city from the 1880s to the 1950s. It
strongly opposed state regulation of utilities,
remained satisfied with high electric rates,
opposed cheap natural gas, and did nothing
to oppose child labor.
Long made his first run for governor of
Louisiana in 1923, standing for a stronger and
more active state government. He introduced
the issue of free textbooks for school children,
an idea foreign to Louisiana but already in
practice elsewhere in the South. He continued
to use the automobile effectively, and he
plunged forward into the new medium of the
radio, speaking in New Orleans over radio
station WCAG. His most important backers
were still members of his family. One of the
biggest issues in 1923 was the Ku Klux Klan.
The other serious candidates, Henry L. Fuqua
and Hewitt Bouanchaud, were both
opponents of the Klan, so it was supposed
that Huey was pro-Klan. Yet, Long ignored
the issue, continuing to talk only about the
secret power of Standard Oil. Though Huey
ran third, the election was so close that his
stature actually increased. The following year
he was swept into a second term as public
service commissioner. By then he was the
odds-on favorite in the gubernatorial election
of 1928.
Louisiana at the time held her accustomed
spot near the bottom of the nation, not only
geographically but in average income (39th of
48), farm property value (43rd), and literacy
(47th). When he won the gubernatorial
election on his second try in 1928, he
embarked upon a series of changes that went
beyond reform to outright rebellion against
the ruling class. He raised severance taxes on
natural resource industries to pay for
schoolbooks for every child, regardless of
whether they went to public or private school.
During his term as governor, the state built
over 2,300 miles of paved roads, 111 bridges,
and, in 1931, employed ten percent of the
men involved in road building nationally. He
moved to abolish the practices of
straitjacketing and chaining and to introduce
dental care at mental institutions (at one, he
claimed, dentists extracted seventeen
hundred diseased teeth from inmates). Long’s
appointee as head of Angola, still considered
one of the toughest prisons in the country,
instituted the state’s first prisonerrehabilitation
program. Long implemented an
adult literacy program in Louisiana that
largely served African Americans.
In 1930, Long ran for the U.S. Senate and
won. But a break with his Lieutenant-
Governor Paul St. Cyr convinced Long not to
take the seat until the end of his term as
governor. It was not until 1932 that Long
✧
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow killed
dozens of police officers in a six-year
rampage across Middle America. Texas
special agent Frank Hamer set up a trap
near Plain Dealing, Louisiana. Their bodies
were brought to the rear of a furniture store
in Arcadia, Louisiana. In the car was a
saxophone, 15 guns, and 3,000 rounds
of ammunition.
COURTESY OF THE LOUISIANA STATE
ARCHIVES COLLECTION.
CHAPTER VI
75