State Quarterlies: Wyoming | Bucking Broncos, A Senator’s Suicide, and The Gay Purge
State Quarterlies is a series of articles uncovering the hidden histories behind the designs seen on American coins. From 1999–2008, the US Mint released a succession of quarters commemorating each of the country’s 50 states, amounting to the release of roughly five new, independently curated designs per year. For years, interest in these shiny notes of legal tender sat solely with nit-picking coin collectors and wizened packrats. But, the further you look into the stories behind these benign images of wildlife, covered wagons, and ships at full mast, the more intriguing these pieces become. From bloody betrayals, to political corruption, to outright murder, the secret history behind state quarters brings us closer to understanding what it means to be an American — and how we can learn from what’s all too easy to write off as boring.
State Quarter: Wyoming
Issued: 2007
Main Design: Bucking Horse and Rider next to the state moniker “The Equality State; Statehood year (1890)
As a state, Wyoming operates as a living paradox. It’s big, yet small; radical, yet stagnant. In size, it’s a massive 100,000 square miles serving a tiny population of 577,000 people. Historically speaking, it was the first to give women the right to vote, but, now has one of the lowest representations of women in state government while 96% of its female population live in counties without an abortion clinic. Even the state symbol, known as “The Bucking Horse and Rider,” seems like a simple silhouette, but has a complicated history.
Wyoming’s trademarked symbol shows up on anything you can think of: its state quarter, license plates, university football jerseys, and even highway markers all boast this iconic image. Created in 1935 by muralist Allen T. True through a commission from politician Lester C. Hunt, the Bucking Horse and Rider originally served as a deterrent for license plate counterfeiters. This initiative was of the one of the first of many successful political moves for Hunt, eventually leading him to governorship, the Senate, blackmail, and suicide by gunshot.
Although a Senator killing himself in his DC office sounds like it should be common knowledge, Hunt’s death still lives on as a whispered side story in American politics. Originally, investigators cited “health concerns” for his decision to end his life. As time passed, however, officials started to get a clearer picture of the intense pressures he faced while under the thumb of a fellow Senator, Joseph McCarthy.
As a progressive liberal from Wyoming in the 1954, Hunt made plenty of enemies in the Senate. Specifically, Senator McCarthy, the architect behind a ruthless Communist witch hunt, wanted to erase any liberal-flavored influence, elected or otherwise, from America’s most powerful institutions. The manufactured hysteria created by this man and his followers, who included the infamous Roy Cohn, lead to the interrogation, blacklisting, and removal of hundreds of people from their jobs in politics, entertainment, and higher education.
Rooting out Communists, especially a few years after the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb, might sound like a predictable reaction to minimize foreign influences. These investigations, however, were based on pure conjecture — not thorough investigations and hard evidence. The methods of rooting out these so-called American traitors didn’t serve as armor against the threat of USSR intelligence. Instead, the initiatives put forth by McCarthy were more like the tendrils of an aggressive cancer, stretching out to destroy whatever it saw fit.
One of the most ludicrous offshoots of these red scare hysterics involved the hunting and firing of gay people from positions of government. McCarthy and his sympathizers believed homosexuals were inherently vulnerable to blackmail from Soviet spies — and could therefore cough up American secrets to keep their sexuality under the radar. Nebraska Senator Kenneth Wherry, a sympathizer of McCarthy, once said:
“I don’t say every homosexual is a subversive and I don’t say every subversive is a homosexual…But a man of low morality is a menace in the government, whatever he is, and they are all tied up together.”
What a cool guy, right? Bet he was a real hoot at dinner parties.
Like so many baseless, reactionary justifications for homophobia, this keystone to the 1950s gay employment purges doesn’t hold water. A study of 117 cases of compromised US spies which occurred from 1943–1995 found only six incidents where the intelligence officer in question was gay — and not a single one cited blackmail over sexual identity as the reason for their betrayal. McCarthyism, however, never used thoughtful research as its guiding star. It piggybacked on existing fear, hatred, and bias.
The DC Metro Police created a Perversion Elimination Program in 1947, which sent undercover cops to gay hangouts around the city as bait for closeted government workers. McCarthy’s people used this existing initiative to its advantage. During a sting operation in 1953, the PEP arrested a young man named Lester Hunt, Jr. for solicitation. Most of his friends knew him as Buddy, while lawmakers knew him as Lester C. Hunt’s son.
With this arrest, Senator McCarthy took aim. As a liberal Democrat with widespread popularity in his home state, Hunt was a huge target for the GOP the upcoming Senatorial elections. Although charges were not officially filed after Buddy’s arrest, Senators Styles Bridges and Herman Welker (both cohorts of McCarthy) threatened to have that decision reversed — if, and only if, Hunt didn’t resign from office immediately. The Senator refused, and saw his son go to trial for solicitation in 1954. Buddy paid a fine, and although there was some coverage of the incident, it remained relatively under the radar for some time.
After his son’s conviction, Hunt continued to get further pressure from McCarthy and other Republican forces. If they couldn’t get him to resign, they wanted to keep him from seeking reelection. His family endured threats of widespread exposure of Buddy’s conviction until June 8, 1954, when Hunt finally caved. He announced he would not seek reelection the following year. Eleven days later, he brought a gun into his DC office and shot himself in the head.
Some speculate that a visit to a doctor earlier in the month also had to do with his decision to commit suicide, but we will never know. Despite the horrible circumstances of his death, no one called for an investigation. According to a historian on Hunt’s final years, the amount of pressure forcefully applied to him and his family remained relatively unknown, partially due to both the instigators and Hunt’s widow — information about Buddy could still get out, and she wanted privacy.
Lester Hunt’s legacy is complicated. Some may view him as a martyr, others could just as easily call him a victim of circumstance. Although he was an advocate for affordable dental care and wanted to increase federal aid for education, he also sponsored a bill advocating for eugenics-based sterilization of Wyoming’s mentally ill inmates during his early political career (the bill didn’t pass). He, like so many people elected into office, lived and worked under complicated moral codes. This history, though, cannot excuse the abuse he experienced at the hands of power-hungry colleagues. But, these tormentors couldn’t hold onto their political influence forever. Eventually, McCarthy started to lose his footing.
During the final month’s of Hunt’s life, McCarthy chose to sick his dogs on leaders in the US Army as he simultaneously continued to threaten the Senator. The McCarthy-Army hearings lasted from April through June of 1954 and ultimately unveiled the baseless hearsay his cause attempted to pass off as proof. His team produced multiple lines of evidence, including photographs and letters, which were obviously tampered with or later determined to be fabricated entirely. Joseph Welch, the Chief Counsel for the US Army during this investigation, evicerated McCarthy’s character during a televised portion of the hearings:
Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think I am a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.
With Welch’s words, the foundations of McCarthyism started to fissure. Six months later his Senatorial peers censured him, effectively ending his influence and power within the US Government. Although he continued to rant and rave about Communist conspiracies, he mostly did so within poorly attended Senate Chamber meetings. Two years later he died of hepatitis, a complication of alcoholism.
Calling this a fall from grace would imply Joseph McCarthy’s crusade harbored some sort of humanity, some base level of decency. A man who chooses to scar anyone based on pure hearsay has no virtue. The treatment of Senator Hunt and his family is just one story out of hundreds ruined through McCarthy’s policies. The gay purge of employees from government positions also robbed American institutions of many talented workers dedicated to public service. This was more than just a loss of income for its victims— it was a loss of dignity and trust.
Sixty years later, thirty states still refuse to offer universal protections against workplace discrimination based on sexuality. McCarthy barely outlasted his anti-Communist, homophobic crusade, but shadows of his era continue to fight against the rights of all Americans.
