Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long [video 55min]

Richard White, Jr., chronicles the life of Louisiana politician Huey Long. White clarifies some of the confusion of Louisiana's most iconic figure in the 1930s. Huey Long was the governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and a U.S. Senator from 1932 to 1935. He was assassinated September 10, 1935, at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge as he was mounting a presidential bid against then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. White wrote Kingfish (Random House) to clear up some of the myths and discrepancies generated by Huey Long's contemporaries and by other authors. He says that Long's brother Earl Long (who also was governor of Louisiana) and Willie Stark, a fictitional character in the novel All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren, have often been confused with the story of Huey Long. White based his book on interviews with people who knew Huey Long and on oral history. White says he tried to just give the facts and not opinions in writing this biography, and he wants his audience to decide for themselves whether Huey Long was a dictator, demogogue, or a democrat and to decide who was responsible for Huey Long's death. White, a professor of public administration at Louisiana State University, writes for The International Encyclopedia of Public Policy and Administration and is the author of Roosevelt the Reformer: Theodore Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner, 1889-1895.