February 6, 2012, The Bilerico Project, New Orleans Inferno: The UpStairs Lounge Fire, by Jesse Monteagudo,
February 15, 2012, Gay Today, New Orleans Inferno: Johnny Townsend on the UpStairs Lounge Fire, by Jesse Monteagudo.
February 26, 2013, Upstairs Lounge Research Continues to Surprise and Sadden, by Robert D. Byrd,
June 19, 2013, Jesus In Love Blog, UpStairs Lounge fire remembered 40 years later: 32 died in deadliest attack on LGBT people,
June 25, 2013, The Blog of Griffin Scott, Dirty Laundry: Musings of a Former News Man,________________________________________________________________________________
February 26, 2008, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, page 10-B, New Orleans fire chief overcame his dropout status; Warren McDaniels,
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February 6, 2012, The Bilerico Project, New Orleans Inferno: The UpStairs Lounge Fire, by Jesse Monteagudo,
Filed By Jesse Monteagudo | February 06, 2012 11:30 AM | 56 comments
On June 24, 1973 an arsonist started a fire that consumed the UpStairs Lounge, a second-floor gay bar in New Orleans's French Quarter. The UpStairs Lounge Fire was both the deadliest fire in the history of New Orleans and the largest mass-killing of gay people in the US.
Among the 31 men and one woman who died in the fire were members of the local Metropolitan Community Church, who frequented the Lounge after services for its Sunday "beer bust." (One particularly grisly photo was of MCC Pastor William R. Larson, who burned to death while trying to escape through a window.)
The UpStairs Lounge Fire showed New Orleans at its homophobic worst as many families refused to claim the victims' bodies and most local churches refused to conduct their funerals. MCC founder Troy Perry and other activists rushed to New Orleans to help bury the victims who, as many locals thought, "got what they deserved."
Though the UpStairs Lounge Fire was written about in several histories of the period - as well as in Rev. Perry's memoirs - the event had to wait 38 years for its first full-length study: Let the Faggots Burn: The UpStairs Lounge Fire (Booklocker; $17.95). In Let the Faggots Burn author Johnny Townsend restores this tragic event to its proper place in LGBT history and reminds us that the victims of the blaze were not just "statistics," but real people with real lives, families, and friends.
"I was 11 when the fire took place, and I remember being horrified by the pictures in the paper the next morning," Townsend says. "I didn't realize at that early age that the UpStairs was a gay bar, and when I came out years later and learned that fact, I was struck all over again by the horror of it all. I wanted to read more about the fire and discovered there was nothing written, so I decided to do the research myself. A friend led me to the bar owner, Phil Esteve, who led me to the bartender on duty that night, Buddy Rasmussen, and things took off from there."
For his book, Townsend interviewed Esteve (who was not present during the fire), Rasmussen and other survivors. He also "read every article I could find on the fire, plus I read the fire investigation report and the coroner's reports. I remember when I asked for the coroner's report for Rodger Nunez,
the main suspect, the librarian gave me only part of it. I asked why there was no cause of death in the report, saying that my information was that he'd committed suicide, and the librarian reluctantly went back to retrieve the rest of the report. He'd been 'editing' it." To learn more about the victims, Townsend "talked to their friends and family, and partners who survived (who may not even have been at the bar that night with them)."
Not all of the literature written about the UpStairs Lounge Fire was accurate or reliable. For example, Rev. Perry's account of the blaze in his 1990 autobiography, "Don't Be Afraid Anymore," is full of inconsistencies and made-up characters. When Townsend asked Perry about it, the preacher "told me to my face that he made most of it up." Though this revelation shocks those of us who otherwise admire Troy Perry, it is indicative of Townsend's determination to discover the truth.
Though the UpStairs Lounge Fire came at the tail end of a year of arson attacks against LGBT institutions - including Rev. Perry's own church in Los Angeles - Townsend notes that police and fire investigators did not find a connection between this fire and other infernos. On the other hand, "several people at the bar that evening told me about Rodger Nunez [a hustler who was kicked out of the bar earlier that evening] and a 'friend' of Rodger's told me he confessed to her. Of course, Rodger was long dead by the time I researched the book, and no prosecution was ever put forward, so he remains the main suspect in a case that will likely never be solved."
Though the loss of 31 gay men (and the straight mother of two of them) was felt by many Crescent City gays - who knew at least one of the victims - it had little impact on their still-closeted community. According to Townsend, the Fire "traumatized them, but it didn't galvanize them in any way that I saw. That claim is made in the bronze plaque put in the sidewalk outside of the bar a few years ago, but I think that is wishful thinking. We want the tragedy to have meant something, to have changed the world for the better in some way, but if any of that happened, it was decades after the fact."
"In the early 1990's, the Louisiana State Museum had an exhibit of 'important fires in New Orleans history,'" Townsend adds, "and this fire was not even mentioned, despite having the largest death toll of any New Orleans fire. It was even then seen as unimportant and was forgotten. I wrote to the museum and pointed out their oversight, and in 1998 they hosted a special panel discussion on the fire at the old U.S. Mint in the French Quarter. I suppose the story shows how 'unimportant' people can be ignored and forgotten, both at the time of the tragedy and for years afterward, but that a few people refusing to forget can force memory on the community."
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February 15, 2012, Gay Today, New Orleans Inferno: Johnny Townsend on the UpStairs Lounge Fire, by Jesse Monteagudo,
Posted in: Jesse's Journal
On June 24, 1973 an arsonist started a fire that consumed the UpStairs Lounge, a second-floor gay bar in New Orleans "French Quarter." The UpStairs Lounge Fire was both the deadliest fire in the history of New Orleans and the largest mass-killing of gay people in the US.Ã Among the 31 men and one woman who died in the Fire were members of the local Metropolitan Community Church, who frequented the Lounge after services for its Sunday "beer bust." (One particularly grisly photo was of MCC Pastor William R. Larson, who burned to death while trying to escape through a window.)
"The UpStairs Lounge Fire showed New Orleans at its homophobic worst as many families refused to claim the victims, bodies and most local churches refused to conduct their funerals. MCC founder Troy Perry and other activists rushed to New Orleans to help bury the victims who, as many locals thought, "got what they deserved."
Though the UpStairs Lounge Fire was written about in several histories of the period--as well as in Rev. Perry's memoirs--the event had to wait 38 years for its first full-length study: "Let the Faggots Burn: The UpStairs Lounge Fire." Townsend restores this tragic event to its proper place in LGBT history and reminds us that the victims of the blaze were not just “statistics,” but real people with real lives, families, and friends.
"I was 11 when the fire took place, and I remember being horrified by the pictures in the paper the next morning," Townsend says. "I didn't realize at that early age that the UpStairs was a gay bar, and when I came out years later and learned that fact, I was struck all over again by the horror of it all. I wanted to read more about the fire and discovered there was nothing written, so I decided to do the research myself. A friend led me to the bar owner, Phil Esteve, who led me to the bartender on duty that night, Buddy Rasmussen, and things took off from there.
For his book, Townsend interviewed Esteve (who was not present during the fire), Rasmussen and other survivors. He also "read every article I could find on the fire, plus I read the fire investigation report and the coroner’s reports." I remember when I asked for the coroner’s report for Rodger Nunez, the main suspect, the librarian gave me only part of it. I asked why there was no cause of death in the report, saying that my information was that he'd committed suicide, and the librarian reluctantly went back to retrieve the rest of the report. He'd been "editing" it. To learn more about the victims, Townsend talked to their friends and family, and partners who survived (who may not even have been at the bar that night with them).
Not all of the literature written about the UpStairs Lounge Fire was accurate or reliable. For example, Rev. Perry's account of the blaze in his 1990 autobiography, Don't Be Afraid Anymore, is full of inconsistencies and made-up characters. When Townsend asked Perry about it, the preacher told me to my face that he made most of it up. Though this revelation shocks those of us otherwise admire Troy Perry, it is indicative of Townsend's determination to discover the truth.
Though the UpStairs Lounge Fire came at the tail end of a year of arson attacks against LGBT institutions, including Rev. Perry's own church in Los Angeles, Townsend notes that police and fire investigators did not find a connection between this fire and other infernos. On the other hand, several people at the bar that evening told me about Rodger Nunez [a hustler who was kicked out of the bar earlier that evening] and a "friend: of Rodger's told me he confessed to her. Of course, Rodger was long dead by the time I researched the book, and no prosecution was ever put forward, so he remains the main suspect in a case that will likely never be solved.
Though the loss of 31 gay men (and the straight mother of two of them) was felt by many Crescent City gays who knew at least one of the victims, it had little impact on their still-closeted community.
According to Townsend, the Fire "traumatized them, but it didn’t galvanize them in any way that I saw. That claim is made in the bronze plaque put in the sidewalk outside of the bar a few years ago, but I think that is wishful thinking. We want the tragedy to have meant something, to have changed the world for the better in some way, but if any of that happened, it was decades after the fact.
"In the early 1990′s, the Louisiana State Museum had an exhibit of "important fires in New Orleans history," Townsend adds, "and this fire was not even mentioned, despite having the largest death toll of any New Orleans fire." It was even then seen as unimportant and was forgotten. I wrote to the museum and pointed out their oversight, and in 1998 they hosted a special panel discussion on the fire at the old U.S. Mint in the French Quarter. I suppose the story shows how "unimportant" people can be ignored and forgotten, both at the time of the tragedy and for years afterward, but that a few people refusing to forget can force memory on the community.
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February 26, 2013, Upstairs Lounge Research Continues to Surprise and Sadden, by Robert D. Byrd,
I originally read about the UpStairs Lounge arson while I was working on my master’s thesis. There was a 20-page paper, which reminded me of the many class assignments I’ve completed in the last five years, stuffed into a file box with many other New Orleans LGBT historical artifacts. The paper didn't seem overly academic—there was no reference page or in-text citation, the byline wasn’t accompanied with an institution name, and the writing was a little rough.
But what the paper lacked in structure and “authenticism” it more than made up for in information. I used the paper to go digging for more information. To my surprise, other researchers had also cited the paper, written by Johnny Townsend, in their work. Since returning to the topic, I’ve stumbled across Townsend’s more complete work—a book title Let the Faggots Burn: The UpStairs Lounge Fire.
A harsh title, but it seems to accurately encompass the thoughts and actions of many in New Orleans at the time of the fire and deaths of 32 people, who were mostly gay men.
In a short forward to the book, Townsend wrote:
I simply wanted the story to be recorded and told before too many people were lost to AIDS and age. I thought at the time that I should write the book in a “popular” fashion, and so I did not include footnotes, only a bibliography . . . I understand now that all this probably lessens the value of the material . . . I finally decided that whatever the book's failings, I wanted it to be more widely available to scholars who might be able to write a more definitive work, and to the public, who need to know what happened that dreadful day in June of 1973.
I honestly felt as though Townsend imagined someone like me doing research with few outlets available for information. I'm not so romantic as to suggest that this was all part of some divine intervention, but as a writer you always hope that your work may mean something to someone. Townsend's work is invaluable to the LGBT community even if there are no footnotes and it was written in a “popular” fashion. He captured history before it was lost to time.
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June 19, 2013, Jesus In Love Blog, UpStairs Lounge fire remembered 40 years later: 32 died in deadliest attack on LGBT people,
"See You at the UpStairs Lounge" by Skylar Fein (Used with permission)
The deadliest attack on LGBT people in U.S. history is being remembered in powerful new ways on its 40th anniversary, including “Upstairs,” a dramatic musical that premieres tomorrow (June 20) in New Orleans. An arson fire killed 32 people at the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans, on June 24, 1973.
Few people cared about the UpStairs Lounge fire at the time. The crime was never solved, churches refused to do funerals for the dead, and four bodies went unclaimed. Now on the 40th anniversary there is a resurgence of interest.
The musical drama “Upstairs” by Louisiana playwright Wayne Self runs June 20-24 in New Orleans and June 29 in Los Angeles. Earlier this year the New Orleans Museum of Art acquired Louisiana artist Skylar Fein’s major installation “Remember the UpStairs Lounge.” The tragedy is also recounted in a new documentary by award-winning film maker Royd Anderson released on June 24, 2013, and in the 2011 book “Let the Faggots Burn: The UpStairs Lounge Fire” by Johnny Townsend.
For queer people, the UpStairs Lounge served as a sanctuary in every sense of the world. It was a seemingly safe place where LGBT people met behind boarded-up windows that hid them from a hostile world. Worship services were held there by the LGBT-affirmingMetropolitan Community Church of New Orleans. The pastor, Rev. William R. Larson, died along with a third of congregation. Half the victims were MCC members. Those who died included people from all walks of life: preachers, hustlers, soldiers, musicians, parents, professionals and a mother with her two sons.
The horror of the fire was compounded by the homophobic reactions. Churches refused to hold funerals for the victims. Finally MCC founder Rev. Troy Perry flew to New Orleans to conduct a group memorial service. Families of four victims were apparently so ashamed of their gay relatives that they would not identify or claim their remains. The City refused to release their bodies to MCC for burial, and instead laid them to rest in a mass grave at a potter’s field.
The crime received little attention from police, elected officials and news media. The only national TV news coverage at the time was these video clips from CBS and NBC:
Louisiana playwright and composer Wayne Self spent five years weaving together the stories of the UpStairs Lounge fire victims and survivors. The result is a dramatic musical that opens tomorrow (June 20) in New Orleans. He says his work takes the form “of tribute, of memorial, even of hagiography.”
The musical "Upstairs" brings back to life people such as MCC assistant pastor George “Mitch” Mitchell, who managed to escape the fire, but ran back into the burning building to save his boyfriend, Louis Broussard. Both men died in the fire. Their bodies were found clinging to one another in the ashes. In the musical, Mitchell sings a song called “I’ll Always Return”:
…Modern age,
Life to wage.
To get ahead, must turn the page.
I can't promise I'll never leave,
But I'll always,
I'll always return….
“I’ll Always Return” is one of five songs from the musical that are available online as workshop selection at http://upstairsmusical.bandcamp.com/.
Self is raising funds so that Mitchell’s son and the son’s wife and can travel from Alabama to attend the play. Many victims of the UpStairs Lounge fire were survived by children who are still alive today.
The musical also explores the unsettled and unsettling question of who set the fire. Rodger Dale Nunez, a hustler and UpStairs Lounge customer, was arrested for the crime, but escaped and was never sentenced. He was thrown out of the UpStairs Lounge shortly before the fire for starting a fight with a fellow hustler. He committed suicide a year later. Self says that other theories arose to blame the KKK and the police, but he implicates Nunez -- with room for doubt -- in the musical.
A gay man may have lit the fire, but the real culprit is still society’s homophobia that set the fuse inside him. Homophobia was also responsible for the high death toll in another way. The fire was especially deadly because the windows were covered with iron bars and boards so nobody could see who was inside. But they also prevented many people from getting outside in an emergency.
The UpStairs Lounge is recreated with haunting detail in Skylar Fein’s 90-piece art installation. He builds an environment with artifacts, photos, video, and a reproduction of the bar’s swinging-door entrance, evoking memories of how the place looked before and after the fire. “Remember the UpStairs Lounge” debuted in New Orleans in 2008 and was shown in New York in 2010. In January 2013 the New Orleans Museum of Art announced that it had acquired the installation. Fein donated it to the museum, saying that he did not want to dismantle the work or profit from its sale. He discusses the fire and shows objects from his installation inthis video.
The victims of the UpStairs Lounge fire are part of LGBT history now, along with the queer martyrs who were burned at the stake for sodomy in medieval times. Their history is told in my previous post Ash Wednesday: Queer martyrs rise from the ashes.
The UpStairs Lounge fire gives new meaning to the Upper Room where Jesus and his disciples shared a Last Supper. It was also the place where they hid after his crucifixion, but the locked doors did not prevent the risen Christ from joining them and empowering them with the Holy Spirit.
The shared journey of LGBT people includes much loss -- from hate crimes, suicide, AIDS, and government persecution. But the LGBT community has also found ways to keep going. Reginald, one of the survivors of the UpStairs Lounge fire, expresses this strength in the song "Carry On" from the "Upstairs" musical:
I can speak.
I can teach.
I can give of the compassion I've received.
I can build.
I can sing!
I can honor all the loves,
That have passed away from me,
By sharing all the good that they have ever shown to me.
I can live my life.
I can carry on.
Carry on.
Carry on!
New Orleans film maker Royd Anderson's “The UpStairs Lounge Fire” documentary last 27 minutes (longer than the fire itself) and includes interviews with an eyewitness, a son who lost his father, a rookie firefighter called to the scene, author Johnny Townsend, and artist Skylar Fein, whose art exhibit about the tragedy gained national prominence. Here is a video trailer for the documentary.
Related links:
UpStairs Lounge online exhibit (LGBT Religious Archives)
The Horror Upstairs (Time.com - NEW on June 21, 2013)
UpStairs Lounge arson attack (Wikipedia)
The Tragedy of the UpStairs Lounge (Jimani.com - website of the bar now at the same location)
Remembering the UpStairs Lounge Fire (glbtq.com)
32 Died, and I Wrote a Musical About It: Why I Did It and Would Do It Again, by Wayne Self (HuffingtonPost)
Upstairs musical website
Upstairs musical on Facebook
Upstairs Lounge Fire documentary on Facebook
This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, humanitarians, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.
Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts
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June 25, 2013, The Blog of Griffin Scott, Dirty Laundry: Musings of a Former News Man,
Forgotten, 40-Year Old Unsolved Louisiana Mass Murder
New Orleans fire fighters at the Upstairs Lounge fire in the French Quarter - June 24 1973
Did you know 32 Louisiana citizens were murdered 40 years ago this week? And did you know this mass murder remains unsolved? I did not. In fact, I’d never heard of it.
On June 24 1973, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, an unknown person, or persons, firebombed the Upstairs Lounge, a gay bar on the corner of Iberville and Chartres Streets.
It was a Sunday night and according to official estimates 65 souls were inside the bar when an incendiary device was set off around 8pm.
Twenty nine people burned alive, three more died soon afterward.
The next morning, as smoke from the fire drifted over the Big Easy, as the bodies were being pulled from the rubble, local radio hosts joked about ‘ French Quarter weenie roasts’ and about burying the 32 victims in fruit jars.
2013-01-31-UpStairs Lounge Fire
I guess it’s no surprise I’d never heard of this mass murder, I grew up in northeast Louisiana after all, about as far from New Orleans as one can get without leaving the Bayou State, plus – the murder of 32 people wouldn't have caught my eye back then, I was only 3 years old.
But I’d never heard of the Upstairs Lounge fire, the worst fire in New Orleans’ storied history, the largest known massacre of gay people to ever happen in the United States, a mass murder that happened in my home state, just forty short years ago, never had a clue till I read about it in the latest edition of Time magazine.
I was truly shocked, how had I never heard of this?
But a quick survey revealed I wasn’t alone.
But was my ignorance just a coincidence, or had this been swept under the metaphorical Louisiana rug? I asked a friend who grew up in New Orleans, a friend who was 15 years old in 1973, in high school when this mass murder happened. This friend had never heard of it. Can you imagine forgetting a fire in your hometown where 32 people died? Let alone an arson, a MASS MURDER?
Governor Edwin Edwards and Mayor Moon Landrieu (father of the city’s current Mayor Mitch and Louisiana’s senior US senator Mary) issued calls for… improving the city’s fire code. That was how the governor of Louisiana and mayor of New Orleans responded when 32 of their fellow citizens, people they were elected to protect, were murdered, burned alive, 40 years ago this week.
The public whitewash of this mass murder began almost immediately and continues to this day.
There are almost as many churches as bars in New Orleans, but not a single one could be found to host a memorial for 31 murdered men and one woman, a mother who’d gone to the bar with her two gay sons who also perished. Some churches even refused to bury their own dead after learning their congregant was murdered at a gay bar.
Families refused to claim their dead sons, three of the men murdered that night in 1973 were never claimed, they were buried in a New Orleans’ Potter’s Field and remain unidentified to this day.
According to Time Magazine, the New Orleans chief of detectives told local reporters that identifying the victims would be difficult because, “some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.”
According to the book, Let the Faggots Burn: The Upstairs Lounge Fire by Johnny Townsend, a man named Roger Nunez is widely believed to have started the fire.
After fighting with another patron that night, Nunez was kicked out of the bar and, according to several witnesses, promised to come back and ‘burn the place down.’ Nunez was questioned by cops at the time but never charged.
According to several friends, Nunez drunkenly confessed to starting the fire on several occasions, but whether he was the arsonist, a mass murderer responsible for the worst fire in New Orleans history – will never be known. Roger Nunez committed suicide in 1974.
Well, it took forty years but finally, thankfully, the dead and their families aren't being ignored anymore. Lectures, memorials and other events are being held this week to remember the 32 Louisianians who lost their lives on June 24 1973.
The New Orleans Times Picayune published an editorial this weekend titled, ‘Honoring the Upstairs Fire Lounge Victims’ – http://goo.gl/vyr5B
Natchitoches native and composer Wayne Self produced a musical drama ‘Upstairs’, based on the Upstairs Lounge fire, the drama debuted June 20 at Cafe Istanbul at the New Orleans Healing Center and a final performance was held at 8pm, Monday June 24 2013, exactly forty years to the hour after the Upstairs Lounge was firebombed.
Also on Monday, a jazz funeral procession made it’s way through the French Quarter to the site of the fire, a building which still bears the scars of the deadliest fire in New Orleans history.
And at long last, a Mayor Landrieu recognized the 32 dead Louisianians.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu, the son of Moon Landrieu, issued an an official certificate commemorating the anniversary of the fire.
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