The 1936 United States presidential election was the 38th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1936. In the midst of the Great Depression, incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican Governor Alf Landon of Kansas in a landslide. Roosevelt won the highest share of the popular vote (60.8%) and the electoral vote since the largely uncontested 1820 election. The sweeping victory consolidated the New Deal Coalition in control of the Fifth Party System.
Huey Pierce Long Jr., nicknamed "The Kingfish", was an American politician who served as the 40th governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and as a United States senator from 1932 until his assassination in 1935. He was a left-wing populist member of the Democratic Party and rose to national prominence during the Great Depression for his vocal criticism of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal, which Long deemed insufficiently radical. As the political leader of Louisiana, he commanded wide networks of supporters and often took forceful action. A controversial figure, Long is celebrated as a populist champion of the poor or, conversely, denounced as a fascist demagogue.
Charles Edward Coughlin, commonly known as Father Coughlin, was a Canadian-American Catholic priest based in the United States near Detroit. He was the founding priest of the National Shrine of the Little Flower. Dubbed "The Radio Priest" and considered a leading demagogue, he was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience. During the 1930s, when the U.S. population was about 120 million, an estimated 30 million listeners tuned to his weekly broadcasts.
It Can't Happen Here is a 1935 dystopian political novel by American author Sinclair Lewis. Set in a fictionalized version of the 1930s United States, it follows an American politician, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who quickly rises to power to become the country's first outright dictator, and Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor who sees Windrip's fascist policies for what they are ahead of time and who becomes Windrip's most ardent critic. The novel was adapted into a play by Lewis and John C. Moffitt in 1936.
Thomas Hale Boggs Sr. was an American Democratic Party politician and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Orleans, Louisiana. He was the House majority leader and a member of the Warren Commission.
Share Our Wealth was a movement that began in February 1934, during the Great Depression, by Huey Long, a governor and later United States Senator from Louisiana. Long first proposed the plan in a national radio address, which is now referred to as the "Share Our Wealth Speech". To stimulate the economy, the Share Our Wealth program called for massive federal spending, a wealth tax, and wealth redistribution. These proposals drew wide support, with millions joining local Share Our Wealth clubs. Roosevelt adopted many of these proposals in the Second New Deal.
The Union Party was a short-lived political party in the United States, formed in 1936 by a coalition of radio priest Father Charles Coughlin, old-age pension advocate Francis Townsend, and Gerald L. K. Smith, who had taken control of Huey Long's Share Our Wealth (SOW) movement after Long's assassination in 1935. Each of those people hoped to channel their wide followings into support for the Union Party, which proposed a populist alternative to the New Deal reforms of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression.
Carl Austin Weiss Sr. was an American physician who assassinated U.S. Senator Huey Long at the Louisiana State Capitol on September 8, 1935.
Rose McConnell Long was an American politician who served as a U.S. senator from Louisiana, succeeding her late husband Huey Long. She was the third woman to serve as a U.S. senator, and the first from Louisiana.
The New Orleans mayoral election of 1934 was held on January 23, 1934. It resulted in the re-election of T. Semmes Walmsley as Mayor of New Orleans.
The New Orleans mayoral election of 1930, held in January of that year, resulted in the election of T. Semmes Walmsley to his first full term as Mayor of New Orleans.
The 1928 Louisiana gubernatorial election was held on April 17, 1928. Like in most Southern states between the Reconstruction era and the civil rights movement, Louisiana's Republican Party was virtually nonexistent in terms of electoral support. This meant that the Democratic primary held on January 17 was essentially the real contest to decide the governor, as winning the Democratic nomination would be tantamount to election as governor.
Garry Boulard is a reporter and author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune and Times-Picayune, among other publications.
John "Spud" McConnell is an American actor and television/radio personality based in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is married to actor/producer Maureen Brennan.
Kingfish: A Story of Huey P. Long is a 1995 television drama starring John Goodman and directed by Thomas Schlamme. The film originally aired on TNT and was nominated for two Emmy awards.
All the King's Men is a 1946 novel by Robert Penn Warren. The novel tells the story of charismatic populist governor Willie Stark and his political machinations in the Depression-era Deep South. It was inspired by the real-life story of U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, who was assassinated in 1935. Its title is drawn from the nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty."
Huey Long is a 1941 bronze sculpture of Huey Long by Charles Keck, installed in the United States Capitol, in Washington, D.C., as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection. It is one of two statues donated by the state of Louisiana.
On September 8, 1935, Huey Long, a United States senator and former Louisiana governor, was fatally shot at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Long was an extremely popular and influential politician at the time, and his death eliminated a possible 1936 presidential bid against Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The political views of Huey P. Long have often challenged historians and biographers. While most say that Louisiana Governor and Senator Huey Long was a populist, little else can be agreed on. Huey Long's opponents, both during his life and after, often drew connections between him and his ideology and far-left and right political movements, comparing his ideology to various movements such as European Fascism, Stalinism, and McCarthyism. When asked about his own political personality, Long simply replied: "Oh, hell, say that I’m sui generis and let it go at that." Writer Robert Penn Warren said "my guess is he was a remarkable set of contradictions."
Huey Long, the former governor of Louisiana, served in the United States Senate from 1932 until his assassination in 1935. A powerful figure, Long was integral in Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 Democratic Nomination and the election of the first woman, Hattie Caraway, to the US Senate. He was investigated for election discrepancies regarding the election of his friend John H. Overton, but no evidence of fraud was found. He proposed sweeping legislation, known as the Share Our Wealth plan, to end the Great Depression. Long often used filibusters to prevent or slow the passage of New Deal legislation.
