Earl Long

Long was born in Winnfield, the seat of government of Winn Parish, in north central Louisiana to Huey Pierce Long (1852–1937) and the former Caledonia Palestine Tyson (1860–1913), a native of neighboring Grant Parish. He was the younger brother of George Shannon "Doc" Long, who later served as a U.S. Representative, and Huey "The Kingfish" Long, who became a politician, being elected as Governor of Louisiana and later as U.S. Senator. Their younger sister was Lucille Long (1898–1985), who married Stewart Smoker Hunt (1895-1966) of Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Their son, John S. Hunt II, was later appointed as one of three members of the Louisiana Public Service Commission, based in Monroe.

Long attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and worked for several years as a traveling salesman. He attended Loyola University College of Law and Tulane University Law School in New Orleans, was admitted to the bar in 1926, and practiced in New Orleans. From 1928 to 1932, Long was the attorney for the inheritance tax collector of Orleans Parish, a lucrative appointment he received from his brother during Huey Long's governorship.

Long first ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1932 without the support of his brother, Governor and U.S. Senator-elect Huey Long, who was committed in that election to the successful candidates, Oscar K. Allen of Winnfield for governor and John B. Fournet of St. Martinville for lieutenant governor. In his autobiography, Every Man a King, Huey Long said that Earl Long's first candidacy for lieutenant governor brought forth charges of a family dynasty in the making.

"I sought to discourage [Earl], stating that it would be disastrous for a brother to undertake to have a brother succeed him [as governor] or to have him elected as lieutenant governor. It was already being charged that I was a dictator and that I had allowed many relatives to be placed on the state payrolls (nepotism). To have added a family name to the head of the ticket either for governor or lieutenant governor would have been disastrous to the whole ticket. My brothers and sisters, however, could not see the matter in that light. I gave everyone to understand that I was irrevocably committed to Allen for Governor and Fournet for Lieutenant Governor. ... I finally declared openly and publicly that I would not be [Earl]'s supporter for either office; that I was under lasting obligations to others; that I had done the best I could for my brother, but that I could not and would not undertake to persuade any of the candidates to whom I had given my promise to step aside. ..."[3]

Not long after Huey Long's assassination, however, Earl Long handily defeated fellow Democrat Clement Murphy Mos (much later a judge in Lake Charles) in the primary held for lieutenant governor in January 1936.[4] Richard W. Leche of New Orleans was elected governor in 1936, but he resigned in scandal in 1939, and Long succeeded for 11 months to the governorship.

The colorful "Uncle Earl" (so-named because of his relatives, including nephew and U.S. Senator Russell Long) once joked that one day the people of Louisiana would elect "good government, and they won't like it!" But, beneath his public persona as a simple, plain-spoken rural Louisianan of little education, he had an astute political mind of considerable intelligence. Earl Long was a master campaigner, who attracted large crowds when his caravan crisscrossed the state. He would not allow a local person to introduce him or his ticket mates at a rally. Only out-of-parish people could do the honor. Long reasoned that nearly any local person would have made some political enemies who might reject Earl Long just because that person's "enemy" was pro-Long. Long was determined to get every vote possible, so tried to remain independent of local rivalries.

Both Earl Long and his brother Huey had grown close to Earl Williamson, a local politician in Caddo Parish. Williamson's son, Don W. Williamson, later recalled Earl Long coming into their town of Vivian and picking up his father to join the Long entourage for a trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where they enjoyed drinking buttermilk and horse racing, as well as illicit attractions in the resort city. Long demanded absolute loyalty among his inner circle, often saying that he did not need them to back him when he was right, but when he was wrong. Long's erratic political behavior led the aspiring singer Jay Chevalier to compose in 1959 the song, "The Ballad of Earl K. Long".

In his memoir, Dodd assesses Long, accordingly:

He had no formal speech training, but he was a great, forceful, and effective speaker. He had no university background in psychology, yet he practiced psychology in his political life, which was his whole life. He had no training in either economics or governmental administration, yet as governor he was an expert in both. Somewhere along the line, Earl Long changed from an amateurish shoe-polish salesman and political camp follower into a sound businessman and excellent government administrator. Other governors...drew from their formal educational training and varied business and political experiences to operate the governor's office. But none of them surpassed old Earl in the politics of getting elected or handling the job after being elected.

Dodd said that Long "was as conservative as Ronald Reagan and as prejudiced as a Cyclops in the KKK about blacks", but he gave the state many liberal laws, was good to blacks, and strong for welfare. Dodd repudiated the 1989 film Blaze about Blaze Starr, a burlesque performer who has an affair with Earl Long. According to Dodd:

Blaze has done much to distort the truth about Earl Long...He never loved Blaze or any of the many strippers and camp followers who came when he whistled...The vulgar language and lurid sex scenes are bad enough to get this movies rated too bad for young people. The unreality of the events and actions of Earl Long make it worthless as a true picture of Earl or Louisiana politics. On a scale of nothing to something, I would rate Blaze a perfect zero.

Long was well known for eccentric behavior, leading some to suspect that he had bipolar disorder. In his last term in office, his wife, Blanche Revere Long (1902–1998), and others attempted to remove him on the grounds of mental instability. For a time, Long was confined to the Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville, but his legal adviser, Joseph A. Sims, was said to have rescued Long from the institution. Long was never formally diagnosed with any mental disorder. Commentators have speculated that political opposition may have led the effort to prove him mentally incompetent, including his wife, who resented his connection with Starr. He had a severe heart attack in 1951. Additionally, in his later years, he was alleged to have suffered from strokes, resulting in further mental impairment. Some have speculated that he may have suffered from dementia in his last days.[15]

Grave of Earl Kemp Long in Winnfield, Louisiana

Bench at Earl Long grave inscribed, but blocked from view by the glare, with words of the C. Austin Miles hymn "In the Garden" (1912)

While confined in the psychiatric hospital in Mandeville, Long kept his political machine running via radio. His staff discovered that nothing in Louisiana law required him to relinquish power because he was confined to the hospital. Long ordered Jesse Bankston, the head of the state hospital system, fired, and replaced him with a supporter, who had Long released. Bill Dodd, who had periods of positive association with Long followed by alienation, defended Long over the hospital confinement. So, too, did long-time State Senator Sixty Rayburn of Bogalusa, a personal and philosophical ally of Long's. Earl and Blanche separated at that time. He died before their divorce was finalized. Long had been reluctant to appoint a successor as governor in 1952 and 1960, for he hoped to return to office in 1956, which he did, and in 1964, but he died in 1960. William C. Havard, Rudolf Heberle, and Perry H. Howard, in The Louisiana Election of 1960 described Long:

"Long knew that a term of office on the part of a relatively inactive and conservative administration would create the type of situation for which his [populist] appeals were ideally suited. Furthermore, he had always played down the race issue (after all, there were [then] 150,000 Negro voters in the state), and he certainly clearly foresaw that the issue could furnish only a limited amount of mileage for political travel in the face of current national developments. In point of fact, his victory in the congressional primary [in 1960] within nine months of the second gubernatorial primary was indicative of the shrewdness of his calculation. If Earl Long had not died immediately following that congressional race....few observers doubted that he would have been an odds-on favorite to rebuild his machine sufficiently to capture the governorship in 1964. As it happens, the death of Earl Long leaves a tremendous hiatus—in a sense deliberately created by Earl himself—in the leadership of the Long faction. ..."[16]

Only a few months after his term as governor expired in 1960, Earl Long ran for the United States House of Representatives from Louisiana's 8th congressional district. An entourage of Long backers from over the years flocked to support him in the race, including Bill Dodd, former Senate floor leader C. H. "Sammy" Downs, state Senator Sixty Rayburn, the Long attorney Joseph A. Sims, and A.A. Fredericks, Long's former executive assistant.[17]

Due to a third candidate, former State Representative Ben F. Holt of Rapides Parish, Long finished in second place in the primary election and was compelled into a runoff contest for the Democratic nomination with the short-term incumbent, Alexandria attorney Harold B. McSween, which Long won. Because no Republican filed for the seat, Long was poised to run unopposed in the general election set for November 8, 1960. However, in September he suffered a fatal heart attack while in the Baptist Hospital (later Rapides General Hospital) in Alexandria.

After Earl Long's death, the Democratic State Central Committee gave the nomination to McSween, who had earlier succeeded Earl Long's late brother George Long in the 8th district seat. McSween was thus unopposed in the 1960 general election and won a second consecutive term in the U.S. House. In 1962, McSween was defeated in the primary election by his fellow liberal Democrat, Gillis William Long, who claimed to be the rightful heir to the Long dynasty. His funeral in Baton Rouge attracted numerous attendees. Long was interred at the Earl K. Long Memorial Park in Winnfield. His nephew, U.S. Senator Russell Long, was among the pallbearers.

Morgan D. Peoples and Michael L. Kurtz, in Earl K. Long: The Saga of Uncle Earl and Louisiana Politics, noted that the only thing certain about Long was his "unpredictability, for no one, and probably not even Long himself, knew what he would say or do next. Yet, whatever he did or said, Long acted from political motives—he was a political animal through and through. 'While the rest of 'em are sleeping,' he once told his rivals, 'I'm politicking.'"

John Kenneth Snyder Sr., a dedicated Long follower, was elected as mayor of Alexandria. Snyder tried to govern in the Long style and was repeatedly opposed by the city's business establishment. In 1950, Governor Long appointed John Sparks Patton, a Claiborne Parish school administrator, as superintendent of the Louisiana School for the Deaf. Patton had advocated that the state pay for taxpayer-funded school textbooks, an idea implemented by Huey Long. In 1951 and 1959, Long named two widows in Webster Parish, Lizzie P. Thompson (of Doyline) and Mary Smith Gleason (of the Evergreen Community, near Shongaloo) to fill the seats in the Louisiana House after their husbands, C.W. Thompson and E.D. Gleason, died, consecutively, in office.

• Louisiana Public Broadcasting of Baton Rouge produced the documentary, Uncle Earl, about the colorful former governor.
• The 1989 film Blaze stars Paul Newman as Long and Lolita Davidovich as the eponymous stripper, Blaze Starr, with whom Long was involved.
• The alternate history strategy game, Hearts of Iron II, features Earl Long as one of a few choices for head of state of the Confederate States of America. In life, he was more unionist than confederate in political orientation.

• List of Governors of Louisiana

• A.J. Liebling, The Earl of Louisiana (1961), collected articles first published in The New Yorker, Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-3343-9.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Earl Long

• EARL KEMP LONG NOTES
• Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans
• State of Louisiana – Biography
• Cemetery Memorial, Louisiana Cemeteries
• Earl Long at Find a Grave