Huey's mother, Caledonia, was determined that her nine children be well educated to achieve their fullest potential. There was no public school in Winnfield, so she home-schooled her children until more formal education became available.
Huey and the youngest children would listen to their older siblings' lessons from underneath the kitchen table. The mainstay of their education was the Bible, in addition to penmanship, writing, math, history, classic literature and poetry.
For a few years, Huey’s father and some neighbors pooled their money to hire a teacher to conduct “subscription school” — a one-room school for children of various ages. Against his will, little Huey attended through the third reader.
In 1903, at age 11, Huey started fourth grade in public school. Far ahead of his class, he was quite bored. Huey was a quick study and later convinced his teacher to let him skip seventh grade. In 1910, after completing the eleventh — and supposedly final — grade of school, a twelfth grade was added as a requirement for graduation. Huey circulated a petition against the additional year and was expelled. Consequently, he never officially graduated from high school. (He was posthumously awarded a high school diploma.)
Huey was an excellent debater in high school and won a scholarship to Louisiana State University as third prize in a statewide debating competition in Baton Rouge. However, he could not afford the textbooks or room and board to attend. Instead he became a traveling salesman. At age 17, he began touring the South for various companies, selling everything from cooking oil to patent medicines.
Huey (top right) in his school's group photograph ~ Courtesy of the Long family.
When sales jobs dried up due to the faltering economy, Huey’s mother saw an opportunity for her talented son to become a preacher as she had always hoped. She sent him to his older brother, George, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to attend seminary classes at Oklahoma Baptist University. After one semester, Huey concluded that he did not have the gift for preaching and decided to give the University of Okalahoma Law School a try. Once there, he found campus politics more interesting than his classes and left school for a good sales job at the end of the term.
Huey's oldest brother, Julius, an attorney, counseled him to continue his law studies at Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. Julius gave him a detailed outline of which classes to take and enough money to last Huey and his bride, Rose, for one year. In 1915, after only one year at Tulane, Huey obtained permission to take a special oral bar exam before the examining committee. He passed easily and returned to Winnfield at age 21 to practice law.
Huey Long (top row, fourth from left) and his classmates pose for a group photograph outside their school in Winnfield, La. ~ Courtesy of the Long family.