Huey P Long Analysis

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The life and Politics of Huey P. Long
The story of the life of Huey P. Long is a long and interesting one. His life was exciting in every aspect including his early life, education, and politic life.
Huey’s early life was exciting and extremely important to the rest of his story. Let’s start this off where we should, Huey’s childhood. He was born to Caledonia Tison Long and Huey Pierce Long, Sr. on August 30, 1893, and was the 7th of nine surviving children. He grew up on a farm in Winn Parish, one of the poorest parishes in one of the poorest states. From an early age Huey loved to read books, even though they were rarely available in his community, and was always trying to learn how things worked. He was so interested in machines, in fact that he would often crawl under the trains to learn about how they worked. Farm work never interested him and he would do any other job to avoid it. These jobs included, but were not limited to,
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Public school was not an option where Huey lived so he and his siblings were home schooled by his mother. Education was so important to his family that his father got some other families together to hire a teacher to teach the town children. When Huey finally attended public school in 4th grade, he was far more advanced than any other students and quite frankly was bored the whole time. Just after he completed 11th grade there was an added 12 grade. Huey petitioned to cancel the new grade and consequently expelled. So oddly enough, even though he was devoted to school, he never truly graduated high school. Huey actually qualified for a scholarship to Louisiana State University as part of winning a state debate competition in Baton Rouge, but didn't attend because he couldn't afford books, rent, etc. The final proof that he cared deeply about education was that later on in his political life he made sure free education was available for all