The Up Stairs Lounge Arson by Clayton Delery-Edwards
This grim but absorbing read covers the events of June 24, 1973, when a fire in a New Orleans gay bar killed 32 people.
On Gay Pride Day in 1973, an arsonist set the entrance to a French Quarter gay bar on fire. In the terrible inferno that followed, 32 people lost their lives, including a third of the local congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church, their pastor burning to death halfway out a second-story window as he tried to claw his way to freedom. This is a riveting account of a forgotten moment in gay history.
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It still stands as the deadliest fire in the city’s history and the largest mass killing of LGBT people on American soil. Though arson was suspected and the police identified a likely culprit, no arrest was ever made. Additionally, government and religious leaders who normally would have provided moral leadership at a time of crisis were either silent or were openly disdainful of the dead, most of whom were gay men.
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Based upon reviews of hundreds of primary and secondary sources, including contemporary news accounts, interviews with former patrons of the Lounge, and the extensive documentary trail left behind by the criminal investigations, Delery-Edwards has done some serious reconstructive work and tells the story of who used this bar, what happened on the day of the fire, what course the investigations took, why an arrest was never made, and what the lasting effects have been.
An astonishing, alarming, disturbing book, not only for the level of details, the horrific attitudes of the people of the city but also the way it changed the LGBT political landscape in America and still has lasting affects to this day, I was aware of the fire but not of the unpleasantness surrounding it, the case, the city’s attitude or the problems it still caused. It opened my eyes, and I’d recommend anyone with an interest in LGBT activism, institutional homophobia and religious intolerance to take up this book and read it.
Out now £15.99
Paperback
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