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It was the first time New Orleans had to openly confront the existence of its own gay community, and the results were not pretty. The fire exposed an ugly streak of homophobia and bigotry. Public reaction was grossly out of proportion to what would have happened if the victims were straight. Yet the city of New Orleans tried mightily to ignore it. It was almost assuredly the largest mass murder of gays and lesbians to ever occur in the United States. The death toll was the worst in New Orleans history up to that time, including when the French Quarter burned to the ground in 1788. Police are visible in the far right window.Ģ9 lives were lost that night, and another three victims later died of injuries from the fire. View of the building from Iberville Street in the fire's aftermath. Their bodies were discovered lying together. Then Mitch ran back into the burning building trying to save his partner, Louis Broussard. One of them was MCC assistant pastor George "Mitch" Mitchell.
Larson's body was not removed from the window throughout the initial investigation, and symbolized the city's uncaring attitude towards the mostly gay victims.īartender Buddy Rasmussen led a group of fifteen to safety through the unmarked back door. This photo appeared in wire stories about the tragedy. 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. A few survivors managed to make it through, and jumped to the sidewalks, some in flames.
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The emergency exit was not marked, and the windows were boarded up or covered with iron bars. The still-crowded bar became an inferno within seconds. An arsonist had deliberately set the wooden stairs ablaze, and the oxygen starved fire exploded. No one had called a cab, but when someone opened the second floor steel door to the stairwell, flames rushed in.
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The congregation members repeated the verses again and again, swaying back and forth, arm in arm, happy to be together at their former place of worship on Pride Sunday, still feeling the effects of the free beer special.Īt 7:56 pm a buzzer from downstairs sounded, the one that signaled a cab had arrived.
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They sang the song that evening, with David Gary on the piano, a professional pianist who played regularly in the lounge of the Marriott Hotel across the street. Members would pray and sing in this room, and every Sunday night, they gathered around the piano for a song they had adopted as their anthem, United We Stand, by The Brotherhood of Man.Īnd if our backs should ever be against the wall, There was a piano in one of the bar’s three rooms, and a cabaret stage. But the bar was still a spiritual gathering place. Original site of the UpStairs Lounge at 141 Chartres Street as it looked in Spring, 2008.īefore moving worship services to their pastor’s home earlier in June, congregation members had been holding services at the UpStairs on Sundays.
After the free beer ran out, about 60 stayed, mostly members of the MCC congregation. Nearly 125 regulars had jammed the bar earlier that afternoon for a free beer and all you could eat special. 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. Almost two dozen gay bars dotted the French Quarter, but gay life in the city remained largely underground. Yet there was still no Gay Pride Parade in New Orleans. That Sunday was the final day of Pride Weekend, the fourth anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising of 1969. Supreme Court announced its momentous decision in the case of Roe v. The church’s Los Angeles headquarters was destroyed on January 27, five days after the U.S. It was the third fire at a MCC church during the first half of 1973, following earlier arsons in Nashville and Los Angeles. Founded in Los Angeles in 1968, the MCC was the nation’s first gay church. At the time, the bar had recently served as the temporary home for the fledgling New Orleans congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church. On the last Sunday in June, 1973, a gay bar in New Orleans called the UpStairs Lounge was firebombed, and the resulting blaze killed 32 people.