One interesting factoid that I meant to post the other day is that my students in my survey class seem really taken with Huey Long. I have always found him fascinating and like to dwell on him a bit.
One student, who is bright but has never spoken, talked at some length about Long. The Kingfish's message and his success have interested them more than almost anything else we have discussed. And they have only read a bit of his "Share Our Wealth" speech, so it is not as if they have been saturated by him.
Long seems to strike a chord because the students seem him as utterly opposed to what they understand the as the core components of the American capitalist system. For some reason, his message seemed much more strident to them than, say, other people we have read such as Emma Goldman, or contemporaries like Father Coughlin.
Maybe FDR was right, maybe Huey Long was the most dangerous in America.
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