Win the Race or Die Trying

Uncle Earl's Last Hurrah

Jack B. McGuire

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781496807649
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Earl Kemp Long (1895–1960) was the political heir to his brother Huey in Louisiana politics. A country boy who never lost his common touch, he ran for office in every state election between 1933 and 1959. He was the best campaigning politician Louisiana ever produced. In his final term as governor, he suffered a breakdown on live television while addressing members of the legislature. He was kidnapped and committed to mental institutions in Texas and Louisiana. That he engineered his own release gives proof that he was in charge of his faculties. Abandoned by his family and his allies, Long was written off politically. But in 1960, he had other ideas. He was plotting his comeback. In poor health, smoking and drinking, he decided to challenge the incumbent in Louisiana's Eighth Congressional District, Harold McSween. Doctors warned him that the race could cost him his life. But politics was his life, and he vowed to win the election or die trying. He did both. This book tells the story of the last year of Long's life and the campaign that he waged and won by sheer force of will. He won the election (and a sizable bet he placed on it), but he was dead in just over a week. Win the Race or Die Trying captures the essence of Earl Long by chronicling the desperate, death-defying campaign he waged to redefine his legacy.

1.

THE LONGS: A POLITICAL FAMILY

Earl Kemp Long loved to tell crowds in stump speeches that he grew up poor but had no regrets about that because it made him understand those who had few advantages and made him want to provide benefits and a better life for them. In his famous speech by the Evangeline Oak in St. Martinville, Huey Long said that generations had cried bitter tears there, waiting for the roads and bridges, schools and hospitals that they had been promised but had never come. Huey asked his listeners to give him the opportunity to dry those tears, and once he had the power to do so, he pulled Louisiana out of the mud and into the modern age. His younger brother, Earl, built on that legacy during a long and storied political career

In his monumental biography of Huey Long, Dr. T. Harry Williams wrote that Huey created a myth that the Longs were abjectly poor and lacked education, culture and opportunity. It was accepted not only by his own generation but also by later ones as well, and finally by history. Writings about the Longs almost universally depict them as representing the very lowest strata of Southern white society, the poor white or hillbilly type, crude, coarse and comic. So plausible did Long make the myth that only a few have challenged it. The most violent dissenters are the feminine members of the Long family, Huey’s sisters, who survived him and have to live with his legend.¹

Huey P. Long Sr., known as Old Hu, provided well for his family, at least by the standards of Winn Parish. He bought a tract of several hundred acres with a large log house in 1886; the cabin was replaced by another house, and in 1907 he built a colonial-revival house with two stories, ten rooms, and a balcony. He had four sons and five daughters; one daughter, Helen, died in infancy. The sons were Huey P. Long Jr., the Kingfish, who dropped the diminutive from his name; Julius T. Long; Earl K. Long; and George S. Long. The surviving daughters were Charlotte, Clara, Lucille, and Olive.

Their father prospered during the lumber boom in the hill country of north central Louisiana. The town of Winnfield grew, and Old Hu profited by selling property he had acquired for home sites. Few Winn Parish families owned more land than the Longs, “nor did any family live any better or more proudly. Old Hu and his wife were proud that they had a big house, that they set a good table, and that they were financially independent. They were even prouder that they were people who had genuine intellectual pretensions, who read books and magazines, and who talked about things they read.” There was no public library in Winnfield, and while books were not common in many households, the Longs boasted shelves of the classics and subscribed to magazines. They were, Dr. Williams said, “among the literary elite.”²

While Huey and Earl both played the rube when it suited them, they were not the uneducated boys they led people to believe. Old Hu “was insistent that every one of his children got some kind of college education and helped each on the way as much as he could,” Williams wrote. “Julius attended Louisiana Polytechnic Institution at Ruston and Tulane University. George received a dental degree from an institution in Quincy, Illinois. Huey spent brief interludes at the University of Oklahoma and Tulane. Earl, who came of college age when his father had more money than when Julius and Huey were young, went to Polytechnic, Louisiana State University [in Baton Rouge] and Loyola University in New Orleans. All the girls took the two-year teacher training course at the state normal school at Natchitoches, and all taught in secondary or grade schools for varying periods. One, Olive, eventually received a master’s degree from Columbia University and became a member of the faculty of the normal school” now known as Northwestern State University.³

Because they owned land and had a relatively large home, the Longs stood high in Winn Parish. That was a relative term, however. In a richer, plantation parish, the Longs would have been on a lower, middle-class rung; in Winn, they were on a top rung because “farmers in Winn, with its thin soil, had a rougher time than those in most other parishes. Winn was poor—pathetically, almost sensationally poor—but they did not accept their lot as something ordained by higher economic law or by people higher on the economic scale; they did not see it as something to be endured without complaint.”⁴

Voters in Winn Parish did not support secession during the Civil War and instructed their delegate to the state convention to oppose leaving the Union; he was one of 17 dissenting votes out of 130, and he refused to sign the Ordinance of Secession. In the 1890s, the Populist Party appealed to the sense of class identity of farmers in the South and Midwest with its “radical remedy for the ills of the time—a program of national governmental control over the economy.” The farmers in Winn embraced its ideology and became its strongest supporters in the state.⁵

The Long children grew up with a keen understanding of their roots in the backwater area known for poverty and dissent. They became a remarkable family that produced governors, US representatives, and US senators, and they divided Louisiana for decades into two political camps—the Longs and the anti-Longs.

The oldest of the Long children, Julius Tison Long, was born in 1879. He practiced law and in 1912 was elected the district attorney for the Fifth Judicial District of Winn and Jackson Parishes. He served for eight years. Rather than stand for reelection in 1920, Julius ran for state district court judge against the incumbent Casimir Moss, a former political ally, and lost in a heated campaign.

Julius moved to Shreveport in 1921 and continued to practice law until his death in 1965. Thomas Martin said that Julius would “write scathing articles denouncing his brother as a thief and a liar.” One, published in Real America in September 1933, was titled “What I Know About My Brother, Senator Huey P. Long.” Julius supported Huey in his first race for a seat on the Railroad Commission in 1918 and backed him in both campaigns for governor.

Julius was “the early organizer, the money raiser, the political horse trader and detail man without whom no political organization flourishes.” When Huey did not support Earl for governor or lieutenant governor in 1932 and a defiant Earl ran for the latter office against Huey’s candidate, Julius and most of the family rallied behind Earl. Julius and Earl both testified against Huey at a US Senate subcommittee hearing into election fraud in Louisiana after Huey’s candidate, John H. Overton, unseated US Senator Edwin Broussard. Julius described how Huey received big rolls of cash from utility lobbyists. He called Huey a drunkard surrounded by a gang of gunmen and said that he should be forced out of public life.⁶

In 1934, Huey and Earl made up, and Earl supported Huey’s candidate, Lieutenant Governor John B. Fournet, for a seat on the Louisiana Supreme Court. Julius supported Fournet’s opponent, and they almost came to blows when Earl taunted him at a political meeting. In later years, Julius and Earl were not close. When Earl was sworn in as governor in 1948, he had Judge Casimir Moss, the man who had thwarted Julius’s judicial ambitions, administer the oath of office. The enmity lingered a decade later. Julius had nothing public to say about Earl Long’s breakdown while the latter was serving as governor in 1959, which was brought on in part by the stress Earl experienced fighting segregationist voter purges that swept the state in the wake of President Dwight Eisenhower’s use of federal troops to integrate Little Rock High School. Julius supported the segregationist ally of Leander Perez, Willie Rainach, for governor in the primary election that year and eventual winner Jimmie Davis in the runoff against New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Morrison.⁷

George Shannon Long, known as Shan or Doc, was regarded as the handsomest of the Long men. He practiced dentistry in Oklahoma City and served in the Oklahoma state legislature, but he eventually returned to Louisiana. He was elected to Louisiana’s Eighth District seat in the US House of Representatives in 1952 and served until his death in 1958.

Charlotte Arabella Long Davis, born November 11, 1876, was the oldest of the clan. In addition to teaching school in Winn Parish, she was a tutor for many children. She married Robert W. Davis, a lumberman, and after his death she was president of Davis Bros. Lumber Company in Ansley in neighboring Jackson Parish. Active in civic and charitable work in Ruston, she sang in the First Baptist Church choir and was a member of the Colonial Dames, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the National Society of the Sons and Daughters of Pilgrims. She died on May 15, 1961.⁸

When Lucille Long Hunt died in Ruston on February 28, 1985, at age eighty-five, she was the last survivor of the Long children. Born on January 31, 1898, she taught school in Shreveport and was widowed by Stewart Smoker Hunt, a prominent lumberman. Her son, John S. Hunt II, was an attorney and served on the Louisiana Public Service Commission from 1964 until 1972.⁹

Olive Ray Long Cooper lived the longest of the Long siblings, passing on at the age of ninety-five on January 8, 1982, in Natchitoches. Born in Winnfield on April 17, 1886, she earned a degree in art. She married Edward Cooper and they moved to Natchitoches so she could head the Art Department at what is now Northwestern State University. Her own work was exhibited in a number of galleries. Active in civic affairs, she founded the Natchitoches Art League and the St. Denis Spring Arts Festival and was a charter member of the Association for the Preservation of Historic Natchitoches.¹⁰

Clara Long Knott joined her sister Lucille Long Hunt in campaigning for Earl in the 1960 race for Louisiana’s Eighth District seat in the US House of Representatives. Born October 5, 1888, she taught in public schools for ten years and in 1914 married William M. Knott of Many, a cashier at Sabine State Bank and Trust. Knott became president of the bank in 1916 and served in that capacity until his death in 1952. Clara prevailed on Earl in 1956 during his final term as governor to make old Fort Jesup a state park.

Fort Jesup was founded by Zachary Taylor in 1822 as an outpost to protect US interests against Mexico. The fort was located within ten miles of Many and had been under the care of locals until Clara convinced her brother to make it a state park. In 1961, Fort Jesup was designated a National Historic Landmark. Clara was president of the Children of the American Revolution and Louisiana vice regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution as well as a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and the Daughters of Pilgrims. She died on January 27, 1973, and is buried in the Fort Jesup Cemetery.¹¹

Charlotte and Clara were proud to be accepted into membership in patriotic organizations based on colonial and revolutionary ancestry, presumably through Longs who were in the Baltimore area before the Revolution. The Maryland Longs were people of substance. Old Hu’s father, John Long, was born in Ohio, but John Long’s father James was an Episcopalian minister and physician from Baltimore. James Long devoted himself to the ministry, and a preaching call took him to Springfield, Ohio, and then, in 1841, to Smith County, Mississippi, from which three of his sons (including Hu) went to Louisiana.¹² Charlotte did the extensive genealogical research required on application for membership and shared her files of church, legal, and census records and the family tree with T. Harry Williams for his biography of Huey.¹³

Huey and Earl would not have been caught dead bragging about colonial ancestors and revolutionary patriots. Nor did they tap into Confederate traditions in their politics. Winn Parish had two hundred slave owners and one thousand slaves in 1860, but most of the white farmers operated small patches. They also saw the Civil War through the traditional southern agrarian lens of “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Many Winn Parish farmers dodged conscription into the Confederate army while hoping for a Union victory. John Long did not serve; his two brothers were in the Confederate army for a limited time.¹⁴ Earl never referred to the Civil War. Huey spoke of Confederate legend in mocking terms during a speech in the US Senate. Williams wrote that Huey had “boasted of his ancestors who had been Southern patriots. They got to be patriots, he said, because the sheriff arrested them and forced them into Confederate service.” Huey and Earl had other ancestors who fought for the Union. Huey also said that he had relatives who wanted to fight on both sides.¹⁵

Earl never conjured up memories of Pickett’s Charge or the burning of Atlanta, and he made no claims of his ancestry other than that they were poor but that his parents had raised him right and worked him hard. He spent hours under a hot sun picking cotton, Earl claimed, and there were days when he was so exhausted that he had to put a watermelon in his bag to make the weight for the day’s picking.

Earl Kemp Long was born in Winnfield on August 26, 1895, the eighth of nine children. He and Huey were very close during childhood, and he was the only family member to remain close to Huey during adulthood.

Earl dropped out of school to take to the road as a traveling salesman. When Huey ran for railroad commissioner in 1918, Earl covered the district for him, nailing up posters and nailing down votes. Huey won. When he ran for governor in 1924, Earl worked for his brother’s strong third-place finish, which laid the groundwork for Huey’s successful 1928 campaign. As a reward for his work on Huey’s behalf, he was named state inheritance tax collector for Orleans Parish.¹⁶

Earl did not receive a college degree, but he took law courses at Loyola University of the South in New Orleans and passed a special bar examination. “If it wasn’t for the Catholics I wouldn’t be a lawyer,” he said. “I went to Loyola University. I’m a Baptist but the Catholic Fathers there gave me a free scholarship.” He wore a Loyola ring and would hold his hand up and point to it on the stump, telling audiences to be tolerant as he was. He told one rally that he was “sixty percent Baptist and forty percent Catholic,” which was the makeup of the state then. His gravelly voice was the result of a childhood accident, when he mistook a jar of lye water for plain water and swallowed from it. In later years, when his throat was sore after stump speeches, he liked to sip from a jar of pure honey.¹⁷

He also had a stump story about how he got up at five o’clock Sunday mornings to get the surrey ready to take his ...