A horrific anniversary that we must remember-39 years ago in New Orleans on June 24th....

[Rowdyboy]

32 lives of our brothers were lost in the most nightmarish manner imaginable. They were murdered by fire, burned alive. Then the community refused to acknowledge their existence as gay men and shamed the few survivors who dared to mourn them. We owe it to them to remember.

http://www.towleroad.com/2010/05/upstairslounge.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erik-ose/gay-weddings-and-32-funer_b_110084.html

On the last Sunday in June, 1973, a gay bar in New Orleans called the UpStairs Lounge was firebombed. The resulting blaze killed 32 people. At the time, the bar had recently served as the temporary home for the fledgling New Orleans congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church. Founded in Los Angeles in 1968, the MCC was the nation's first gay church.

Located on the second floor of a three-story building at the corner of Chartres and Iberville Streets, the UpStairs Lounge had only one entrance, up a wooden flight of stairs. Nearly 125 regulars had jammed the bar earlier that afternoon for a free beer and all you could eat special. After the free beer ran out, about 60 stayed, mostly members of the MCC congregation.

At 7:56 pm a buzzer from downstairs sounded, the one that signaled a cab had arrived. No one had called a cab, but when someone opened the second floor steel door to the stairwell, flames rushed in. An arsonist had deliberately set the wooden stairs ablaze, and the oxygen starved fire exploded. The still-crowded bar became an inferno within seconds.

The emergency exit was not marked, and the windows were boarded up or covered with iron bars. A few survivors managed to make it through, and jumped to the sidewalks, some in flames. Rev. Bill Larson, the local MCC pastor, got stuck halfway and burned to death wedged in a window, his corpse visible throughout the next day to witnesses below.

[kestrel91316]

1. OMG, I never heard of this before. Shameful buried and forgotten history.

[DesertFlower]

2. i hadn't heard about it either.

so sad and appalling. i do remember the stone wall in new york. i was living there at the time and frequented gay bars even though i'm a straight woman.

[Drunken Irishman]

3. Awful - and likewise, never heard of this before.

[Behind the Aegis]

4. Even while I lived there, I never heard this!

This is horrific. Thank you for sharing this information.

[KamaAina]

32. Yeah you rite!

And I worked for the campaign of an openly gay candidate for City Council!

edit: New Orleanians remember all other minutiae of their three centuries of history in excruciating detail. Wonder why this has been scrubbed from the collective consciousness?

[colorado_ufo]

5. Native of there, but moved to Colorado before it happened. Never heard of it.

[sabrina 1]

6. How horrible, I had never heard this story before either.

Truly horrific, and no one was ever caught, it doesn't look like they tried very hard.

[Rowdyboy]

9. They did have one suspect who was detained

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UpStairs_Lounge_arson_attack

The official investigation failed to turn up a conviction for the crime. The likely suspect who was arrested in relation to the attack was Rogder Dale Nunez.[1] In 1970 he was diagnosed with "Conversion Hysteria," and four months before the fire he had visited a psychiatric clinic. When questioned, Nunez went into convulsions and was taken to Charity Hospital, where he eventually slipped out from doctor's watch and was never picked up again by police, despite frequently appearing in the French Quarter afterwards. A friend later told investigators that Nunez confessed to the deed while drunk on at least four occasions. He had told a friend, Miss Fury, that he squirted the bottom steps with Ronsonol bought at a local Walgreens and tossed in a match. He didn't realize, he claimed, that the whole place would go up in flames.[1] Nunez killed himself a year later. His autopsy revealed a brain tumor.

[sabrina 1]

11. Thank you. I can't believe that this story has been virtually unknown for so long.

If Rogder Dale Nunez was responsible, and it does seem that he may have been, it sounds like he was influenced by religion. I'm learning a lot here, I never heard of 'conversion hysteria' before, as a clinical diagnosis, although it is obvious when you watch any of these televangelists that something wrong is going on there, imho anyhow.

Clearly this person was probably not legally responsible and maybe punished himself in the end, but the worst aspects of this story is the blatant disrespect for human beings from all parts of society, the bigotry so open and not all that long ago. I had no idea how bad it was.

Thank you for shedding some light on this story, even though it way too late for the victims, this should not be hidden, and it is never too late to remember them with the dignity they did not receive at the time.

[Rowdyboy]

13. My whole purpose in posting this is that they not be forgotten....The overwhelming sadness in being

dismissed as unimportant, swept under the carpet, to be forgotten is inhuman. Some families refused to even pick up the bodies of their "loved ones".

And almost as disgusting is the hate mail directed at the only clergyman willing to pray for them. Its one of the saddest stories I've ever read.

[sabrina 1]

16. It definitely is one of the saddest stories I have ever read.

I just read your other comment with the newspaper reports. Absolutely sickening. I am glad you posted this and will spread it around. And shame on their families above all.

The story disappeared from the news, it says, after only two days. A mass murder swept under the rug, and we point fingers at other countries.

I feel so sad, thinking of members of our own family, one who recently died in his seventies, who spent time in Florida, perhaps around that time.

Thank you for bringing this tragic story to our attention.

[Major Nikon]

7. I am literally 4 blocks from there right now

I had never heard about it. I'll see if I can find any sort of memorial on that corner.

This says a lot:

In the days that followed, other churches refused to allow survivors to hold a memorial service for the victims on their premises. Catholics, Lutherans, and Baptists all said no.

[Rowdyboy]

8. According to Wikipedia only one clergyman was willing to hold a prayer service....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UpStairs_Lounge_arson_attack

Coverage of the fire by news outlets minimized the fact that LGBT patrons had constituted the majority of the victims, while editorials and talk radio jockeys had made light of the event.[4] No municipal figures made mention of the fire, and only one clergyperson, Episcopalian Reverend William Richardson of the St. George's Episcopal Church, agreed to hold a small prayer service for the victims on June 25. Some 80 people attended the event, and Richardson was rebuked by Iveson Noland, the Episcopalian bishop of New Orleans, for the service the next day; Noland received over 100 complaints from parishioners concerning the service, and Richardson's mailbox filled with hate mail. Eventually, a memorial service was held at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church on July 1, headed by Louisiana's Methodist bishop Finis Crutchfield and led by MCC founder Rev. Troy Perry, who had flown in from Los Angeles. Four of the victims, including Ferris LeBlanc and three unidentified white males, were buried in a mass grave at Holt Cemetery prior to the funeral.

[Major Nikon]

15. I went by there today

It looks just like it did in the 2008 photo. I couldn't find a marker of any type anywhere on that corner.

I took a picture, but I have no way to post it right now.

[Rowdyboy]

18. I'm really very sorry to hear this....I'd read somewhere that there was at least a plaque

commemorating the tragedy. Unbelievable that a city as history conscious and gay welcoming as my beloved New Orleans would not even have a marker for this spot.

[Major Nikon]

19. I agree. There are markers all over NO for everything else

As tragic as losing those 32 souls to hate is, I think letting their story get lost in history is nearly as bad. People need to know the consequences of hate.

[Rowdyboy]

20. Possibly something could be done in conjunction with the 40th anniversary next year....

I don't know anyone there personally but I would be surpised if there was no interest. Its a heartbreaking story.

[William769]

10. I had not heard this either.

But our history can be spotty. Hopefully that will change.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

12. Has there been another tragedy in the United States in the 20th century

Last edited Sun Jun 24, 2012, 04:03 PM - Edit history (1)

where that many people died (let alone were murdered) and almost no one has heard about it? Everyone has heard about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and that happened 62 years earlier.

It's shocking that this many people were murdered in such a horrible way in the 1970s and this wasn't a huge national news story.

You know, I wasn't aware of how easily a gay American's life could be destroyed for merely being identified until I saw a PBS show on the Stonewall riots. This makes clear that they could be murdered with impunity as well. I didn't need proof, but this leaves no question why coming out is so important to the gay community.

[Rowdyboy]

17. Sadly, yes, in 1940 the Rhythm Nightclub in Natchez Mississippi burned killing over 200 mostly young

black men and women. Apparently an accidental fire caused by Spanish moss which was used as a decoration. It was a hideous loss of innocent lives but the victims were all black and the story is largely forgottten today.

Here's a story from the local paper 72 years ago...

http://www3.gendisasters.com/mississippi/2405/natchez%2C-ms-rhythm-night-club-fire%2C-apr-1940


Natchez, MS Rhythm Night Club Fire, Apr 1940

212 NEGROES PERISH IN NATCHEZ BLAZE

Dancers Trapped As Spanish Moss Causes Holocaust

Only One Entrance To Building; Survivors Tell Tales Of Horror; Pockets Of Corpses Pilfered

By James Marlow
NATCHEZ, Miss., April 24 (AP) -- The death list today mounted to the staggering toll of 212 in a Spanish-moss fed fire which swept through the Rhythm Night Club here last night stampeding 300 negro dancers into a holocaust. All the dead were negroes. Of the survivors eight remained in the hospital in critical condition and two score others who applied for treatment in the two crowded hospitals were later sent to their homes.... The dead were counted by Deputy Sheriff J. R. BROWN while the scores of seared bodies mostly young men and young women, were laid out in rows in three undertaking establishments and a garage adjacent to the dance hall.

Meantime, horror-stricken and weeping relatives milled about the scene, identifying relatives who were victims of the disaster. Survivors told tales of horror of the fire which started in a maze of overhanging dry moss in the hall formerly built for a blacksmith shop and later turned into a dance hall at fifty cents a ticket.
The blaze started near the front entrance of the building and flared in a flash down the moss to the far end of the 200-foot deep hall where the orchestra was playing a jazz tune. At the outbreak of screaming the dancers thought a fight had started in the far end of the hall. But within a minute, survivors said, the flames flashed through the moss down the entire length of the hall and enveloped the dancers in an inferno of flame and heat.

Trapped by the fire, some of the dancers stampeded through the flames in the front of the building where a small door, the only exit, was located while others herded into the rear around the orchestra stand and the bar where they were burned or suffocated to death by flaming decorations dropping on them in the intense heat.

and from the following days Delta Democrat Times...

Survivors Tell of Fight At Natchez Fire
Victims Used Pop Bottles, Fists, Seeking To Flee Burning Night Club

NATCHEZ, Miss., April 25 (AP) -- Pop bottles, fists, clawing hands and the crash of heavy shoulders into yielding bodies -- were all used by the doomed in the Rhythm Night Club fire which took 198 negro lives. Eyewitnesses and burned survivors told how the victims -- men, woman and children -- who had gone to the night club to make merry with WALTER BARNES name band from Chicago battled for life in the smoke and flames.

Blocked from escape by the racing fire which burst out suddenly early Wednesday around the only exit, a door, in the hall covered with galvanized iron and with windows barred against gatecrashers, the victims stampeded to the rear only to die in heaps against a wall. When the 15 minute blaze was extinguished in the place which had become a roasting oven encased in iron, burned and lacerated dead and dying were found with cloths torn and piled upon one another, broken bottles on the floor and women's clothes scattered everywhere.

CHARLIE HALL, a club bartender who battered his way to safety through a boarded-up window, said: "Lot of them fought. They screamed and they yelled and they fought with their fists, pop bottles, with anything they could lay hold of. I got out through that window and dragged a woman with me." WALTER AUDREY, another bartender, who escaped through the window, too, said he first heard screams at the front of the building, thought it was a fight, paid no attention, and then looked up to see smoke racing over the rafters draped with long-dry Spanish moss.

"Everybody was running toward the rear of the bar where I was," he said. "The place began to fill with smoke. The band stand was right next to the bar. (WALTER BARNES and most of his musicians died in the fire). They were all rushing toward the band stand. When I got through the window and I turned and helped half a dozen other people who got jammed in the window trying to get through."

The Delta Democrat-Times Greenville Mississippi 1940-04-24

[UnrepentantLiberal]

21. I guess, prior to 1980, tragedies only mattered

if they happened to the right people.

[Rowdyboy]

23. Even today, when young white girls are missing the media goes into hyperdrive....

Young black girls? Not so much. Cultural prejudice is built into everything we see in the news. Some lives are ever so much more valuable than others-at least to the main-stream media. That in itself is a tragedy.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

24. Yep.

This is still one sick country.

[Blue_Tires]

28. There was this asshole forerunner to today's teabaggers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

[MattBaggins]

30. Add to that the suffering in German concentration camps and that aftert he war

they were the one group that were not freed and instead were sent to other prisons.

[Rowdyboy]

14. Here's more from Towleroad today...

http://www.towleroad.com/2012/06/39th-anniversary-of-the-upstairs-lounge-fire-video.html

Initial news coverage omitted mention that the fire had anything to do with gays, despite the fact that a gay church in a gay bar had been torched. What stories did appear used dehumanizing language to paint the scene, with stories in the States-Item, New Orleans' afternoon paper, describing "bodies stacked up like pancakes," and that "in one corner, workers stood knee deep in bodies...the heat had been so intense, many were cooked together." Other reports spoke of "mass charred flesh" and victims who were "literally cooked."

The press ran quotes from one cab driver who said, "I hope the fire burned their dress off," and a local woman who claimed "the Lord had something to do with this." The fire disappeared from headlines after the second day.

A joke made the rounds and was repeated by talk radio hosts asking, "What will they bury the ashes of queers in? Fruit jars." Official statements by police were similarly offensive. Major Henry Morris, chief detective of the New Orleans Police Department, dismissed the importance of the investigation in an interview with the States-Item. Asked about identifying the victims, he said, "We don't even know these papers belonged to the people we found them on. Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar."

[joeybee12]

22. Horrific is right...and really, it wasn't that long ago...

KNR

[UnrepentantLiberal]

25. Have you posted this in GD?

If not, can I post a link to this thread?

[Rowdyboy]

26. I only posted it in American History-you're quite welcome to post a link in GD

Thanks.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

27. Done

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002854528

[CaliforniaPeggy]

29. Oh, my dear Rowdyboy...

I cannot fully express how sickened I am to read this story. These were human beings. They were valuable members of our society, and we have not honored them. We have ignored their tragic deaths, and this is shameful.

I am appalled.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention...

[closeupready]

31. I don't remember this incident specifically, but I come from

an area of the country that is, I would say, some of the most regressive in terms of how gay people are abused and hated. Always is, and probably still is today.

So part of what explains why I can be so militant is I suppose a reaction to being terrorized as a child, knowing I was gay but knowing that if I came out, there were practically no limits to the amount of abuse to which I'd be subjected.

I was basically exiled from home, and had no social support of any kind as a youngster.

Damn right I'm a militant fag. And fuck you to those who made my life such a living hell.

Thank you, Rowdyboy, for posting this important piece gay history.

[mitchtv]

33. Thanks for the little bit of history, Rowdyboy

I had never heard of this incident. stunning and depressing.