Book Talk and Signing with Historian Rick Ewig

Cheyenne, Wyoming, was a boomtown during WWII. In addition to the expansion of Fort Francis E. Warren, a new Quartermaster Replacement Training Center was built just outside of Cheyenne, where thousands of soldiers were trained. The Fourth Regiment at the QRTC was African-American, and soldiers in the unit often visited the clubs and restaurants in the segregated Black part of Cheyenne.

Just two months after taking office in 1944, the newly elected mayor, Ira Hanna, along with his chief of police, a captain, and a sergeant, began demanding that African American club owners open their businesses to gambling and prostitution and pay “protection money” to keep it “legal.” Unwilling to play along with the extortion, Black club owner Lola West and other Black businesspeople contacted the Cheyenne Police Department and the county prosecuting attorney, Byron Hirst. The group arranged a dramatic sting operation.

Hanna and his cohorts were arrested, tried, and convicted. All served time in the Wyoming State Penitentiary.

Historian Rick Ewig’s research into WWII-era Cheyenne focuses on the city’s colorful residents, the attempted exploitation by a dishonest mayor and his chief of police, and a corrupt racket that was brought to a dramatic end by a young county attorney and an African American woman.