Sen. Huey P. Long, Jr. of Louisiana died 75 years ago on September 10, 1935, after being shot in the state capitol in Baton Rouge two days earlier. He was a man with a legacy that is far more complicated than he's portrayed in the snippets of references to him in most histories or the distortions of popular fiction.
The piece I'd like to refer everyone to on this 75th observance of his death is the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography from 1969: Huey Long by T. Harry Williams, which was written while many of the sources from Long's political career and life were still alive. Below are a couple of paragraphs from the beginning of Chapter 1, "Not Even a Horse" (with apologies to Mssr. Williams, I have elided a couple of terms he used for historical verisimilitude).
The story seems too good to be true--but people who should know swear that it is true. The first time Huey P. Long campaigned in rural, Latin, Catholic south Louisiana, the local boss who had him in charge said at the beginning of the tour: "Huey, you ought to remember one thing in your speeches today. You're from north Louisiana, but now you're in south Louisiana. And we got a lot of Catholic voters down here."