Tinderbox

by Robert W. Fieseler

  According to witnesses like Stewart Butler, who recalled being overcome with emotion, it was a disembodied cry that echoed in the sanctuary, as if grief had taken on a voice. “There was a deep, respectful, caring emotion that was palpable,” recalled Paul Killgore.18

  Troy Perry then yielded the pulpit so that John Gill could lead a final hymn, but Perry rushed back in alarm. Interrupting John Gill, he advised everyone in the church that television and press cameras had set up across the street. Evidently, according to Nola Express reporter Ed Martinez, WDSU, the local NBC affiliate, was spotted “out front getting footage before the funeral.” The Advocate and the Vieux Carré Courier said that Times-Picayune cameras were also present. Gay New Orleanians, it seemed, were being surrounded by hostile parties.19

  A buzz filled the chamber, followed by protestations from people who said that the cameras should be forcibly taken away. Henry Kubicki recalled becoming frightened at the prospect of losing his job at the Marriott. Troy Perry informed the crowd of a contingency plan, through which Reverend Kennedy could guide anyone who didn’t wish to be photographed, out of fear of being exposed as a homosexual, out a side door onto Governor Nicholls Street. According to the Times-Picayune, Perry called this alternate exit an “escape hatch” to be used “in case there were those who would be embarrassed.” A loud debate ensued, with one man saying that the cameras were already gone and others wondering if Troy Perry was arranging a stunt and several more insisting that they should all walk out together, come what may. Paul Killgore described it as the “one dramatic incident, which has been reported over and over; it is just like folklore.”20

  Then a “butch-looking woman,” whom Killgore recalled as sitting behind his right shoulder, stood up and shouted, “I came in the front door, and I’m damn well going out that way!” Her statement roused many. In an unprecedented act, the crowd rose and headed with the woman down the front steps of St. Mark’s—prepared to face the cameras. “I looked at [my boyfriend], and he looked at me,” recalled Killgore. “I said, ‘Are you okay with this?’ and he said, ‘Yeah.’ ” So they marched. Even Bishop Finish Crutchfield walked outside with the worshippers as they left. “That was the first time, for a lot of people, they had ever joined together with other gay people, gay and lesbian, in the light of day, though they’d known each other at night,” recalled Perry.21

  This sudden act of defiance seemed to symbolize the challenges that lay ahead: that gays and lesbians could never hope to gain their equality and become part of a human rights movement unless they were willing to be seen in public. Neither Henry Kubicki nor Paul Killgore, who each left through the front door, remembered seeing any cameras on Rampart Street. They recalled rejoicing among a teeming crowd of gay men and lesbians, who exited into a beautiful afternoon. Perry stood in front to corral reporters and body-block cameras, if necessary. He told the Associated Press, “In light of the real fear of recrimination felt here, I’m jubilant.” Ed Martinez of Nola Express wrote how WDSU reporters seemed to vanish: “Mercifully, they were gone by the time the service was over, and the mourners were not subjected to the sight of a camera grinding away.”22

  No news photography or video footage of the exterior of St. Mark’s would surface in news coverage, and so local gays came to question the veracity of this liberating moment. Years later, Troy Perry would even question their presence to the Up Stairs Lounge historian Clayton Delery: “In a very real way, it doesn’t matter that there were no cameras. People had believed they were there.” And yet, a recently resurfaced film log for WDSU, recording its news cameramen’s locations on July 1, 1973, states, “Memorial—held for 30 homosexuals who died in F.Q. fire.”23 Not only had a news cameraman been present outside of the church with heavy equipment, but the sight of that equipment seems to have been expunged, even gaslighted, from the minds of men who encountered it.

  Immediately after the memorial, Troy Perry, who would not return to New Orleans for several years, flew to Los Angeles to attend a more public service for the Up Stairs Lounge victims. While no major news stories about Perry would appear in the Times-Picayune until July 1977, his national prominence would increase throughout the decade. Among other things, he would bring lesbian leaders into the fold of the MCC; crusade against the Anita Bryant antihomosexual movement; and tell the story of the Up Stairs Lounge to a personal advisor for President Jimmy Carter. Perry’s memories of this time in New Orleans would always be nuanced. “I’m a Southern boy, and when I left home, I left home,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘I will never live like I’ve seen people have to live.’ ” The Dixie closet had almost killed him in the 1960s; he once attempted suicide because of it, worried that his first, ill-fated gay relationship was his only chance at happiness.24

  Of the gay leaders who traveled to New Orleans, only Paul Breton and Morty Manford would stay behind to continue their grassroots work. Breton continued to minister to the dying, while Manford spent a few weeks organizing recently emboldened homosexuals into a political Gay People’s Coalition. “We are aggrieved,” began the group’s first letter to City Hall.25 These simple words were, in fact, a revolutionary proclamation.

  : ACT III :

  LEGACY

  CHAPTER 12

  Deliverance

  July–September 1973

  A National Day of Mourning for the Up Stairs Lounge was observed at the MCC chapters of no fewer than forty-six American cities, as well as in Great Britain. News of the fire inspired a collective grief that extended far beyond Rampart Street. Some 500 mourners gathered at the San Francisco memorial, according to figures published by The Advocate, as did 400 in Los Angeles, 125 in New York, 120 in San Diego, 100 in Washington, D.C., 80 in Denver, 65 in Milwaukee, and 45 in Miami. Those nineteen minutes of hell that devastated a community resulted in collective action on a level not seen since the Pride parades that commemorated the Stonewall Riots.1

  Gay bars, nightclubs, and bathhouses in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., all went dark at the appointed hour. In San Francisco, some straight bars belonging to the local Tavern Guild followed suit out of mutual respect. However, in New Orleans, sympathies for the Up Stairs Lounge were mostly limited to the St. Mark’s event. Café Lafitte in Exile on Bourbon Street continued business as usual, with registers ringing. Ignoring the lack of response from greater New Orleans, The Advocate devoted several pages to the Up Stairs Lounge memorials and called them a “rare showing of national gay togetherness.”2 The establishment media ignored these postfuneral observances: neither The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, nor The Washington Post reported on any such event in its city.

  In San Francisco, Jim Foster, a gay leader who in 1972 spoke as part of the first openly homosexual delegation invited to a Democratic National Convention, delivered an impassioned tribute to each of the Up Stairs Lounge victims. In Seattle, Scott Lewis, an MCC layperson, eulogized the loss of Bill Larson. In San Diego, MCC Reverend John Hose gave a sermon on the theme of freedom. In Manhattan, a representative of the New York Gay Synagogue, which would officially become Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in 1975, read a mourner’s kaddish.3 Although few people around the country knew the victims personally, many still felt it necessary to mourn.

  In Los Angeles, Jim Kepner, a pioneering journalist and gay historian, delivered a speech citing Lazarus from the Gospels. “As the Son of Man raised up Lazarus from the dead with a kiss,” Kepner said, “so must our incandescent love, our devotion, our commitment, commemorate and resurrect those who were so monstrously burned.” He rebuked the millions of closeted Americans ignoring the Up Stairs Lounge. “Inescapably,” Kepner implored, “for each of us, a part of our souls was ignited, and a part charred in the Up Stairs bar last Sunday.” Likewise, at the Metropolitan Community Temple of Los Angeles, a call for unity went out: “If I am for myself only, what am I? And if not now, when?”4

  Morris Kight, who’d helped to organize these Los An
geles events, addressed a crowd. He told the story of the New Orleans Emergency Task Force and its efforts to make a difference. Kight provided a rousing introduction for Troy Perry. At the sight of familiar faces, Perry burst into tears. He delivered yet another version of his “United We Stand” eulogy. He and Kight lit thirty votive candles, one for each person dead in New Orleans at that time.5

  OTHER EVENTS, QUITE pertinent to the case, were transpiring in New Orleans, where investigators from the Louisiana Office of the State Fire Marshal, not the city’s police force, finally located Roger Dale Nunez. Acting on the false lead fed to police by the nineteen-year-old hustler Mark Allen Guidry, Deputy State Fire Marshals Edward Hyde and John Fischer canvassed Esplanade Avenue for several days seeking the “Gerry or Johnny,” identified by Guidry as the patron violently ejected by Buddy Rasmussen prior to the blaze. Unsurprisingly, the pair came up empty-handed. So Hyde and Fischer circled back to Iberville on Monday, July 2, to seek out Mark Allen Guidry. Finding him, they demanded that he come with them to Esplanade Avenue. Guidry broke down and confessed. “He told us that the subject’s name was not Jerry [sic] or Johnny, but was one Roger Nunez and that he lived in the 600 block of Iberville St,” the deputy marshals reported.6

  In the company of the young hustler, Hyde and Fischer headed to Cee Cee Savant’s apartment. There, they found Roger Dale Nunez sleeping on the sofa. The marshals observed immediately that Roger fit the profile of a “pathological firesetter” as determined by major studies of the time: a white male between the age of sixteen and twenty-eight with physical injury and a criminal record. “This subject was questioned about a swelling that he had on his jaw,” reported the deputy marshals, “and he stated that he had had a fight with three Negroes on Iberville Street the night before who took his wallet and knocked him down.”7

  The investigators asked Roger about the Up Stairs Lounge, and he admitted to having been present in the bar “prior to the fire during the Beer Bust and that he did not have any trouble in the lounge prior to leaving.” The marshals already possessed testimony about a fight inside the Up Stairs Lounge, which challenged this account.8 Roger was likely misstating how he hurt his jaw—blaming black attackers instead of a fellow patron—and the circumstances of his expulsion. The marshals must have sensed they had a man who could spontaneously weave a tale and distort a violent incident to portray himself with pathos.

  Hyde and Fischer asked Roger Nunez to come with them to make an official statement. Once Roger agreed, he started dressing. Meanwhile, the marshals phoned their NOPD counterparts, Charles Schlosser and Sam Gebbia, who were still assigned to investigate the case. When the detectives turned up, they observed the “white male subject, 25–26 years old, 5'8" tall, medium build with black medium length hair which appeared to be dirty.” The deputy fire marshals were excited. Standing before them was the most viable suspect since David Dubose, the drunken teenager, had confessed and recanted on June 25.9

  Schlosser and Gebbia gleaned from the marshals that the suspect had just experienced an epileptic seizure, with limbs and arms akimbo. Then something occurred with police in the room, and at whirlwind speed. Roger Dale Nunez, detectives determined, needed urgent medical assistance, and they radioed for two police patrolmen to immediately whisk him to Charity Hospital, taking him away from the arson specialists.10

  Roger would not be questioned as he rode in the police car. In the admitting room of Charity Hospital, he suffered what appeared to be a grand mal seizure. He looked to lose consciousness while convulsing. Treating Roger for epilepsy, doctors heard him complain of a separate pain in his chin, although how Roger could verbalize pain after a grand mal seizure was a wonder. Taking X-rays, they discovered a fracture in Roger’s jawbone and admitted him for surgery. He was now being treated at the same hospital where fire victims Luther Boggs and Larry Stratton still lay in the burn unit.11

  Schlosser and Gebbia finally arrived in the emergency room to question the suspect, but they found Roger “unable to speak to detectives due to his prior seizure.” This combination of delay and impairment prevented further casework. How could Roger not speak if he had just been complaining to the doctors of jaw pain? And how could he make complaints after a grand mal seizure, which commonly results in a so-called postictal state affecting verbal and visual memory? Nevertheless, the quartet of police officers left the hospital “after informing personnel that upon completion of oral surgery and release that they were to notify detectives.” Curiously, the NOPD chose to leave Roger Dale Nunez without guard, presuming that he would stay put in his injured state. Later, the NOPD detectives would criticize Deputy Fire Marshal Hyde for his performance on this same day, July 2, by noting how Hyde “more or less led” one witness into making a statement, thereby casting doubts on the abilities of their state counterparts.12

  DEACON MITCH MITCHELL was pronounced dead over the weekend using his commitment ring to Horace Broussard, the symbol of their holy union, which had taken place at the Up Stairs Lounge. News trickled back from New Orleans to Jamestown, Alabama, where Mitch’s son Duane recalls spending the week with his paternal grandparents.13

  In a confusing sequence of events, Duane and his brother, Stephen, identified by the States-Item as “two Alabama youngsters,” had spent the day after the fire with their father’s neighbors, who preoccupied the boys with streetcar rides and a trip to Pontchartrain Beach. Strangers they barely knew had told them their dad was in an accident. Then the kids flew back to their grandparents and stayed in their father’s boyhood home. Old pictures of Mitch were still on display throughout the house, and some of the portraits looked uncannily like Duane. Distraught, Duane had tried to distract himself by riding his bike, a Christmas gift from his dad and Uncle Horace. Then the telephone rang with confirmation that Mitch Mitchell had lost his life. So ended more than seven days of uncertainty, during which adults had not wanted to traumatize the children by tipping their hands about a death prematurely.14

  Duane’s grandparents took him and Stephen onto the porch—away from cousins—so that they could hear the news directly from people they loved. Duane recalls them weeping, crushed not just by the weight of losing their son but also by the sad duty of having to tell the news to his children. “They just came up and said that there’d been a terrible accident, and he was dead,” remembered Duane. “My granddaddy said, ‘I’ll do the arrangements and everything,’ and I said, ‘No, I want to go.’ ” Duane went with his grandfather to the local funeral home to choose a casket. “I went and called the preacher to preach the service,” Duane continued, “and I also picked out a place for him to be buried.” Duane found comfort in these actions. It made him feel grown up.15

  “The [casket] couldn’t be opened or anything,” recalled Duane. “He was burned so bad. They put a picture of him on top of his casket. That was it.” Mitch Mitchell’s death notice in the Birmingham News (like Bill Larson, he was not deemed important enough to merit an obituary) provided no advance notice of the service and made no mention of the Up Stairs Lounge or of Horace Broussard, the lover for whom Mitchell had sacrificed his life.16

  Relatives whom Duane had never met before traveled vast distances to pay their respects, and Duane’s mother, Mitchell’s ex-spouse Vicki Tane, helped by bringing food for guests. According to Duane, a lot of people attended. “My dad was real well liked,” he recalled. Horace Broussard wasn’t mentioned in the eulogy at Pleasant Valley Baptist Church, and nobody thought to explain to Duane how his father had been romantically involved with Uncle Horace. Their holy union from the MCC revealed itself to be legally meaningless once each of their remains were transferred to biological next of kin, who did not confer or even consider the idea of a joint funeral for two grown men. They were buried in separate states.17

  Duane wouldn’t understand the circumstances of his father’s death for decades. “Nobody ever said anything about who did it or if anybody was arrested,” Duane stated, which felt underhanded to him. “It was a gay thing that wasn�
�t to be heard of at that time. They put it under the rug and left it there.” Duane’s aunts and uncles then forbade him from visiting his father’s grave in the cemetery, largely because it brought back gruesome thoughts, and nobody wanted him to mention the loss. “I didn’t find out he was gay until I asked my mom,” he explained. “I was fifteen or sixteen.”18

  After their father’s death, Duane and Stephen were expected to behave like small adults to make things easier on caretakers. Vicki Tane, their mother, worked hard in a hosiery mill, so the brothers would be stewarded into manhood by a network of relatives. Tane periodically brought boyfriends into their lives and attempted to forge new households, but Duane would express fury at anyone attempting to take the role of his father. Fortunately, Mitch Mitchell had had a small life insurance policy, and his sons were the beneficiaries. Their grandparents kept that money in a trust until the boys turned eighteen. In the meantime, Duane and Stephen lived off of Social Security survivors’ benefits. “Me and my brother [would] draw a check off of him,” said Duane. “And that’s what we grew up on because that’s all the money that we had.”19