Huey P. Long was shot on this date 90 years ago at the Capitol

Remember the biggest thing about taking our 8th grade field trip to the capital was getting a picture with my finger in the bullet holes still in the walls..

Killed by a Catholic High alumnus (then St. Vincent's Academy).

quote:

---

The "Kingfish" was a US Senator by then, but his firm grip on state politics kept in Louisiana often.

---

This is a damn understatement. He was literally in town to make the state legislature do what he wanted by getting rid of his political opponents district. He also didn't let the governor use the governor's office at the capital because that was "his" office (its now the speakers office).

quote:

---

He was literally in town to make the state legislature do what he wanted by getting rid of his political opponents district. He also didn't let the governor use the governor's office at the capital because that was "his" office (its now the speakers offcie).

---

Ole Huey let that power go to his head, that's what did him in. Someone finally got tired of his shite.

Any truth to the rumor that Roosevelt had him killed?

Carl Weiss is a hero

quote:

---

Remember the biggest thing about taking our 8th grade field trip to the capital was getting a picture with my finger in the bullet holes still in the walls..

---

We didn’t take pictures but we all stuck our fingers in the bullet hole. Which you can’t do anymore and I don’t even think you can see it anymore. They have a shrine thing set up in the spot where he was shot now.

quote:

---

As a child growing up in Louisiana in the 1990s, I learned that there was absolutely no doubt that in the 1930s, the state’s best governor and all-around great man died at the hands of a political opponent out for blood. That story, like so much about Long, is a lie.

The myth of Long’s assassination is just one in a long line of tales meant to lionize the former governor and U.S. senator, painting over his lengthy track record of corruption and brutality in his pursuit for power. Huey P. Long, historian Arthur Schlesinger explained in a 1986 Ken Burns documentary about the populist politician, was the closest thing to a dictator the U.S. has ever seen.

“It’s a mistake to regard Huey Long as an ideological figure, a man committed to a program,” Schlesinger said. “I think Huey Long’s great passion was for power and money, and he stole a lot of money and accumulated a lot of power and destroyed all those who got in the way of these two ambitions.”

---

quote:

---

Though many people were hurt at the hands of Long and his cronies, perhaps none suffered more gravely than the Pavy and Weiss families. Benjamin Pavy was an anti-Longite judge in St. Landry Parish whose judicial district Long gerrymandered in hopes of preventing him from winning reelection. Judge Pavy had planned to retire, but for insurance, Long allegedly began spreading a rumor that Pavy had “Negro blood,” hoping to delegitimize him in the eyes of voters.

On September 8, 1935, Long was making the rounds at the Louisiana state capitol in Baton Rouge, a regular occurrence for the then–U.S. senator who still maintained total control of the state, both through a constant physical presence and by extension through his vast network of political cronies working on his behalf. Dr. Carl Weiss, Sr., a 29-year-old physician married to Judge Pavy’s daughter, lived near the capitol and decided to confront Long after wrapping up his house calls for the day.

When he challenged the Senator about his harassment of Judge Pavy, Long allegedly dismissed the young doctor by using a racial slur. According to sworn testimony consistent with forensic evidence, Weiss responded by punching Long in the jaw. Long’s bodyguards panicked, showering Weiss with bullets. After sustaining 61 gunshots, Dr. Weiss died, leaving behind a young wife and 3-month-old son, Carl, Jr.

During the altercation, Long, too, was shot in the abdomen, but he was well enough to walk down the capitol steps, hail a cab, and ride to the hospital without medical assistance.

According to Bayou Brief, Weiss’s patients testified that he was of sound mind and normal demeanor during his visits that day, and Weiss had even scheduled a surgery for the next morning. Additionally, two hospital nurses revealed in sworn testimonies that Long only said Weiss punched him in the jaw. And most importantly, his bullet wound was inconsistent with the gun Weiss carried as security on his house calls — a gun that Weiss’s son says was not even in his possession during the argument with Long.

It is almost certain that when Weiss punched the senator for allegedly using a slur about his family, Long’s bodyguards overreacted, firing their guns needlessly and indiscriminately into the skirmish. Long was simply caught in the crossfire.

Of course, the truth was not politically expedient for Long’s allies, who indubitably feared public backlash to the bodyguards’ negligence. So, as he underwent surgery, they began their cover-up. They moved Weiss’s car. They tampered with and hid evidence. They removed Weiss’s gun from his glove compartment and planted it on the scene. And they launched their smear campaign against Weiss, portraying him as a bloodthirsty assassin determined to stop the good works of Huey P. Long who was thwarting the best efforts of the bad guys to keep the little guy down.

---

quote:

---

The entire premise of his assassination was a lie, and people in power knew it. In 1993, Colonel Frances Gavemberg, a former superintendent of the Louisiana State Police in the 1950s who was well-respected for his work combating organized crime, swore in an affidavit that he knew the identities of the men responsible for Long’s death.

Long’s family had their doubts, too. While his son, Senator Russell Long, publicly maintained that Weiss killed his father, he insinuated in private letters to Carl Weiss Jr. that he was unsure of the circumstances of his father’s death.

A few weeks after Long died, Louisiana officials conducted a bogus investigation, fraught with corruption and stacked with Long insiders. They relied upon key witness testimony from individuals who were not present that day. Investigators refused to perform an autopsy or ballistics test.

---

LINK

The last survivor to witness the assassination was the father of a college friend of mine. He was a law student at the time and working as an elevator operator in the state capital building. He was holding the elevator door open for Long when the Kingfish was shot.

My friend, Dr. Julian Bailes, is a former team doctor for the Pittsburgh Steelers and one of the most prominent neurosurgeons in the country. He and another doctor are the two who discovered CTE, publicized it, and took on the NFL to prove it. Watch the movie Concussion. Alec Baldwin plays my friend.

JUDGE JULIAN E. BAILES, SR.

T. Harry Williams suggested that medical malpractice killed him.

He would have survived if they had waited for the surgeons from New Orleans. The first surgeon missed a bleeder.