Long, Rose McConnell, 1892-1970

<p>Rose McConnell Long (April 8, 1892 – May 27, 1970) was a United States Senator and the wife of Huey Long. She was the third woman to ever serve as a U.S. Senator, and the first from Louisiana.</p>

<p>Rose McConnell was born in Greensburg, Indiana. She met Huey Long after she won a cake baking contest that he had organized to promote a product he was selling at the time. After a two-and-a-half year courtship, Rose and Huey were married in 1913. The next year he turned to the study of law, and became a lawyer after passing the bar. They had three children together. Huey Long became a highly successful politician, elected as governor of Louisiana in 1928 and then US Senator from Louisiana in 1930.</p>

<p>After Huey's assassination in 1935, Rose Long was appointed to serve in his seat in the United States Senate until a special election could be held. She won the special election on April 21, 1936, to serve the remaining months of her husband's term, but she declined to run that fall for re-election to a full six-year term. Because Hattie Caraway (D-Arkansas) was already serving in the Senate when Rose Long was elected, it marked the first time that two women had ever served simultaneously in that body.</p>

<p>Rose Long died in Boulder, Colorado, in 1970, where she lived near her daughter, Rose Lolita Long McFarland. She was also survived by her sons, Palmer Reid Long of Shreveport, Louisiana, and Russell B. Long, then the sitting United States Senator from Louisiana.</p>

<p>Rose Long emerged from behind the long shadow of her flamboyant husband, the slain Louisiana populist Huey Pierce Long, to fill his Senate seat for an abbreviated term. Accompanied by her children, Long diligently assumed her husband’s committee duties while, in Baton Rouge, the shattered remnants of the Long political machine vied for a permanent successor.</p>

<p>Rose McConnell was born in Greensburg, Indiana, on April 8, 1892. She was the first child born to Peter McConnell, a farmer, and Sally B. McConnell, who came from a long line of southern planters. In 1901 the McConnell family moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, where Rose attended the public schools and later became a local schoolteacher. In 1910 she entered a cake baking contest with a “bride loaf cake.” One of the judges, a traveling salesman who had sponsored the contest to pitch the lard substitute he was selling, was named Huey P. Long. Rose McConnell won the contest, struck up a long correspondence with the itinerant Long, and, in 1913, in Memphis, Tennessee, they married. The Longs moved to New Orleans, where Rose worked as a secretary to pay Huey’s way through the Tulane Law School. After finishing a three-year program in seven months, he was admitted to the bar in 1915. Rose Long put her stenography skills to use on behalf of her husband’s early political campaigns and served as a political adviser. Meanwhile she raised their three children: Rose, Russell, and Palmer. In 1928, after serving on the state railroad commission, Huey Long was elected Louisiana governor. As the state’s political boss, he introduced sweeping legislation that ushered in large public works programs. Two years later, he won election to the U.S. Senate where, in the early years of the Depression, he gained a large populist following of farmers and laborers who rallied around his “Share the Wealth” initiative, which called for a radical redistribution of wealth to afford every American a decent standard of living.</p>

<p>Rose Long distanced herself from her husband’s political work during his years as governor, though she remained supportive. Unlike her egomaniacal husband, Rose shied from the spotlight and served as the anchor for her young family. She was so unobtrusive as Louisiana’s first lady as to be largely unknown to many of her husband’s constituents. While Long traveled in large caravans and constantly in the company of bodyguards, Rose Long routinely drove the family car on long trips with the children, recalling that she occasionally stopped to pick up hitchhikers, whom she and her daughter would pepper with questions about politics without revealing their identities.</p>