Jun 12, 2006

When the initials NRA didn't refer to guns

Huey Long's spectacular 1935 filibuster.
“I can’t remember back to a time,” Huey Long once said, “when my mouth wasn’t open whenever there was a chance to make a speech.” In June 1935 the Kingfish, as he was called, performed one of the most spectacular feats of speechifying by anyone ever, holding forth in the U.S. Senate from just after noon on the 12th until almost four the following morning about everything from the United States Constitution to how to make salad dressing. The New York Times, in awe of the “apparently inexhaustible speaking powers of the man from the Louisiana canebrakes,” called his performance “one of the greatest feats of physical endurance the [Senate] chamber had ever seen.”

More on Huey Long here.

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