Huey Long

At every stop in the Papist district, Long would open his speech with a little story about every Sunday morning, when he was a boy he would "get up at six in the morning...and I would hitch our old horse up to the buggy and I would take my Catholic grandparents to Mass. I would bring them home, and at ten o'clock I would hitch the old horse up again and I would take my Baptist grandparents to church."

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On the way back to Baton Rouge that night, Williams relates, the local politician turned to Long and said; "Why Huey, you've been holding out on us. I didn't know you had any Catholic grandparents."

"Don't be a damned fool," Long reportedly replied. "We didn't even have a horse."

Of course there are, and always have been, those who shared Huey Long's intuitive ability to find just the right words to woo a suspicious crowd. But the annals of political history are littered with the bodies of smooth-talking but ultimately mediocre politicians. What set Huey Long apart was that beneath his self-consciously homespun manner a first-rate intellect apparently lurked.

Here's one measure of just how formidable Long's intellect was. Though he had dropped out of school when he was in his early teens, Long was accepted into Tulane Law School, then one of the most prestigious institutions in the South, and the alma mater of many of the entrenched and aristocratic old-line mavens who would become his political and in most cases, personal foes.

Logo: Tulane Law School

But unlike the privileged sons of the Garden District and the planter class, Long had neither the time nor the patience to complete his studies. Instead, he again quit school, and in 1915, then just 21 years old, Long challenged and passed the Louisiana Bar exam, becoming a lawyer and charting the course that would propel him to political heights that at the time, only Long himself could imagine.

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