Tinderbox

  43.Perry interview; Frank Straughan, “Phases of a Man Called ‘Moon’: Mayor Landrieu and Race Relations in New Orleans, 1960–1974” (M.A. thesis, University of New Orleans, 2011); Moon Landrieu, oral history interview with Mark Cave, September 15, 2009, New Orleans Life Story Project, Historic New Orleans Collection.

  44.“New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu on MTP June 18, 1972,” Meet the Press, NBCNews.com, June 18, 1972, www.nbcnews.com/video/meet-the-press/38923238#38923238; “Mayor Offers Sympathy, Prayers, Thanks in Fire,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, December 1, 1972, 11; “Landrieu Leaves After Fire News,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, November 30, 1972, 1.

  45.Landrieu, oral history, September 15, 2009; Delery, “Thieves, Queers, and Fruit Jars”; J. E. Bourgoyne, “Searched Well, Says Giarrusso,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, January 9, 1973, 1, 3; “N.O. Mourning Is Proclaimed,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, January 10, 1973, 9; “N.O. in Tribute to Blood Banks,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, January 17, 1973, 7.

  46.Delery, “Thieves, Queers, and Fruit Jars”; “Fire Sweeps Bar, Kills Twenty-Nine in New Orleans,” 4; Wigg, “Twenty-Nine Killed in New Orleans,” 5.

  47.Jeff Taylor, Politics on a Human Scale: The American Tradition of Decentralism (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2013), 239; Straughan, “Phases of a Man Called ‘Moon’ ”; interview with Moon Landrieu, December 13, 2014; Moon Landrieu, oral history with Mark Cave, May 12, 2009, New Orleans Life Story Project, Historic New Orleans Collection.

  48.Landrieu interview; Landrieu, oral history, May 12, 2009; Straughan, “Phases of a Man Called ‘Moon.’ ”

  49.Interviews with Roberts Batson, July 11, 2014, and September 13, 2017; “No Post Offer Given to Irwin,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 23, 1970, 13; interview with Clancy DuBos, September 5, 2017; Dan Baum, Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2010), 68; Winston Lill, “Must Invite List,” June 29, 1973, Records of Mayor Moon Landrieu, City Archives.

  50.“Democrats Elect Edwards’ Choices,” Monroe [La.] News-Star, February 21, 1972, 2; “State Democrats Show New Unity,” Monroe News-Star, September 14, 1973, 2; Landrieu, oral history, September 15, 2009; interview with Moon Landrieu, December 18, 2014; Roberts Batson, “Claiming Our Past” (column 5), Impact, c. July–August 1994 (read at Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones Research Files, Sears Papers).

  51.Delery, “Thieves, Queers, and Fruit Jars”; Don Lewis, “Tragedy Fund Is Established,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, January 13, 1973, 1; Rushton, “Forgetting the Fire,” 1.

  52.Scrapbook 4, March–July 1973, Moon Landrieu Collection, Special Collections, Monroe Library, Loyola University, New Orleans; Moon Landrieu to Internal Revenue Service, June 22, 1973, Moon Landrieu Collection; Moon Landrieu to Gerhard Sigle, June 4, 1973, Records of Mayor Moon Landrieu, City Archives.

  53.Paul Atkinson, “Beer’s Dilemma on Bridge Noted,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 8, 1973, 48; Ken Weiss, “N.O. Area Has Active Fourth,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 5, 1973, 2; Landrieu, oral history, September 15, 2009.

  54.Scott Ellis, Madame Vieux Carré: The French Quarter in the Twentieth Century (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), 185; Robin Riley to Hans-Henrik Holm, June 11, 1973, Records of Mayor Moon Landrieu, City Archives; Winston Lill to Charles Ferguson, telefax, June 28, 1973, Records of Mayor Moon Landrieu.

  55.Perry and Swicegood, Don’t Be Afraid Anymore, 87; Paul Breton, “United We Stand” (unpublished manuscript, August 1973), National New Orleans Memorial Fund Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives; Chris Segura, “Black, Empty Windows Stare,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 26, 1973, 3; Chris Segura, “Devastating French Quarter Fire Probed by Three Agencies,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 26, 1973, 3 (and accompany photograph by Robert T. Stoiner); Rushton, “Forgetting the Fire,” 6.

  56.Perry and Swicegood, Don’t Be Afraid Anymore, 88; Perry interview; Morris Kight, transcript of phone interview with The Advocate, June 27, 1973, New Orleans Upstairs Bar Fire/Advocate Records, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

  57.Rushton, “After the Fire Upstairs,” 5; George Schwandt, “Holocaust in New Orleans,” The Advocate, June 18, 1973, 9; Perry, transcript of Advocate interview, June 26, 1973.

  58.Perry, transcript of Advocate interview, June 26, 1973; interviews with Richard Everett, September 20, 2016, and August 25, 2015.

  59.WWL-TV New Orleans editorial transcript, June 25, 1973, National New Orleans Memorial Fund Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives; Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, 168.

  60.“Upstairs Lounge Fire Network News Coverage,” Youtube.com, September 4, 2007, www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvvRJNQolYM.

  8: Visions

  1.Bruce Nolan and Chris Segura, “Memorial for Fire Dead Has Forgiveness Theme,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 26, 1973, 3; Troy Perry and Thomas Swicegood, Don’t Be Afraid Anymore (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 89; Henry Kubicki, “Henry Kubicki Account” (unpublished manuscript, November 14, 2013), LGBT Religious Archives Network (http://exhibits.lgbtran.org/exhibits/show/upstairs-lounge-fire), Berkeley, Calif.

  2.“ ‘We Knew Them as People,’ Pastor Tells Gay Mourners,” New Orleans States-Item, June 26, 1973, 3; Ed Brown, “A Brief History of St. George’s” (unpublished manuscript, January 20, 2011; courtesy of Ed Brown); W. E. B. Du Bois, “Relations of Negroes to Whites in the South,” The Social Theory of W. E. B. Du Bois, ed. Phil Zuckerman (New York: Sage Publications, 1965), 50.

  3.Nolan and Segura, “Memorial for Fire Dead,” 3; “ ‘Pray for Those Who Did This,’ ” The Advocate, July 18, 1973, 8; interview with Ronald Rosenthal, June 14, 2016; Johnny Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn: The Up Stairs Lounge Fire (self-published through BookLocker.com, 2011), 36; interview with Richard Everett, August 30, 2016.

  4.Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn, 35; William Richardson, letter to the editor, The Voice of Integrity 1, no. 2 (Summer 1991), LGBT Religious Archives Network (http://exhibits.lgbtran.org/exhibits/show/upstairs-lounge-fire); interview with Henry Kubicki, September 4, 2015.

  5.Richardson, The Voice of Integrity.

  6.“ ‘Pray for Those Who Did This,’ ” 8.

  7.Eric Newhouse, “Arson Squads Probe Rubble of Bar; Gay Group Plans Day of Mourning,” Mobile [Ala.] Press, June 26, 1973; “ ‘Pray for Those Who Did This,’ ” 8; “ ‘We Knew Them as People,’ ” 3; interview with Richard Everett, August 30, 2016.

  8.Troy Perry, transcript of phone interview with The Advocate, June 26, 1973, New Orleans Upstairs Bar Fire/Advocate Records, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles; interview with John Meyers, February 3, 2016.

  9.Cynthia Ann Savant, Statement to Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal, August 1, 1974, 10–12, Louisiana State Archives, Baton Rouge (courtesy of Clayton Delery); Clayton Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson: Thirty-Two Deaths in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, 1973 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2014), 130.

  10.Savant, Statement to State Fire Marshal.

  11.Ibid.; Rodger Dale Nunez, New Orleans Police Department Arrest Register, April 4, 1973, Johnny Townsend Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives; Marine Casualty Report, U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation, October 7, 1971, dco.uscg.mil.

  12.Kubicki interview, September 4, 2015; interview with Dexter Brecht, July 29, 2015; Angus Lind, “Fire Bares the Grisly Face of Death,” New Orleans States-Item, June 25, 1973, 6; Newhouse, “Church Slates”; “New Orleans Fire Probe Launched,” Monroe [La.] News-Star, June 25, 1973, 2; “Church Deacon Believes ‘Gay Bar’ Flash Fire Product of Arsonist,” Fremont [Calif.] Argus, June 26, 1973, Joseph P. Manguno, “Deacon in Tavern Blames Arsonist,” Boston Herald American, June 26, 1973.

  13.Kubicki interview, September 4, 2015; Joseph Courtney Craighead, World War II draft card, Ancestry.com; Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn, 127.

  14.Kubicki interview, September 4, 2015; Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn, 127.

  15.Perry and Swicegood,
Don’t Be Afraid Anymore, 80; Paul Breton, “United We Stand” (unpublished manuscript, August 1973), National New Orleans Memorial Fund Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives; Chris Segura, “Devastating French Quarter Fire Probed by Three Agencies,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 26, 1973, 1; “General Case Report,” New Orleans Department of Police, August 30, 1973, 2, Upstairs Lounge Records, City Archives, New Orleans Public Library; “McCloskey,” The Times-Picayune, June 28, 1973, 14. Although 816 N. Gayoso St. is a valid street address in New Orleans, I could find no record of forty-eight-year-old Clarence McCloskey’s having lived there. A casual review of phone books reveals that address to be the residence of McCloskey’s dad, Clarence McCloskey Sr., a sixty-nine-year-old retiree with a working phone. The unlikely notation that the Times-Picayune would fail to perform this due diligence in reporting a death suggests a degree of intentionality in their error.

  16.Captain Edwin Holmes, New Orleans Fire Department, email to author, November 15, 2017 (Holmes confirmed Bernard McCloskey’s employment as a New Orleans fireman from 1956 until 1983); Supplemental Lists, Orleans Parish Coroner, 1973, Upstairs Lounge Records; “McCloskey” (paid death notice), New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 28, 1973, 14.

  17.“General Case Report,” NOPD, 39; Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn, 312; George Stephen Matyi, California Divorce Index, 1966–1984, ancestry.com; interview with Tina Matyi, October 29, 2016; Supplemental Lists, Orleans Parish Coroner, 1973, Upstairs Lounge Records.

  18.Perry and Swicegood, Don’t Be Afraid Anymore, 80; Everett interview, September 30, 2016; Breton, “United We Stand.”

  19.“New Charity Burn Unit Aids Fire Victims,” New Orleans States-Item, June 27, 1973; Segura, “Devastating French Quarter Fire Probed,” 3.

  20.“Yesterday’s Dreams, Today’s Ghosts,” The Advocate, March 13, 1974, 12, 16.

  21.Morris Kight, Special Visiting Permit to Charity Hospital, June 26, 1973, Kight (Morris) Papers and Photographs, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives; interview with Troy Perry, December 2, 2014; Morris Kight, transcript of phone interview with The Advocate, June 27, 1973, New Orleans Upstairs Bar Fire/Advocate Records, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

  22.Perry and Swicegood, Don’t Be Afraid Anymore, 93; Larry Stratton, Autopsy, Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office, 1973, Upstairs Lounge Records, City Archives; Perry interview; James Hambrick, Autopsy, Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office, 1973, Upstairs Lounge Records, City Archives.

  23.Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn, 1; Perry and Swicegood, Don’t Be Afraid Anymore, 93; Luther Boggs, Autopsy, Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office, 1973, Upstairs Lounge Records; Luther Thomas Boggs, World War II draft card, Ancestry.com; Breton, “United We Stand.”

  24.“Arson Assumption in N.O. Fire Eyed,” Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, June 27, 1973; Perry interview; Bill Rushton, “Forgetting the Fire,” Vieux Carré Courier, July 6, 1973, 1.

  25.Rushton, “Forgetting the Fire,” 1; Breton, “United We Stand”; Chris Segura, transcript of phone interview with The Advocate, June 26–27, 1973, New Orleans Upstairs Bar Fire/Advocate Records, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives; George Schwandt, “Holocaust in New Orleans,” The Advocate, June 18, 1973, 2.

  26.Bill Rushton, “How the Media Saw It,” Vieux Carré Courier, June 29, 1973, 5; Breton, “United We Stand”; Schwandt, “Holocaust,” 2.

  27.Bill Rushton, “After the Fire Upstairs,” Vieux Carré Courier, June 29, 1973, 5; “Arson Assumption”; Bill Rushton, “Fire Tragedy Confused Both Straights, Gays,” The Advocate, July 18, 1973, 9; Rushton, “How the Media,” 5.

  28.Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn, 136; Winston Lill to Doug Augustin, June 26, 1973, Records of Mayor Moon Landrieu, City Archives; Winston Lill to Jay Handelman (memorandum), June 26, 1973, Records of Mayor Moon Landrieu, City Archives.

  9: Fun House

  1.Troy Perry and Thomas Swicegood, Don’t Be Afraid Anymore (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 93; interview with Troy Perry, December 2, 2014; Morris Kight, “New Orleans Community Disaster Relief Committee” diagram, c. June 26, 1973, Kight (Morris) Papers and Photographs, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles.

  2.Kight, “New Orleans Community Disaster Relief Committee” diagram; Troy Perry, transcript of phone interview with The Advocate, June 26, 1973, New Orleans Upstairs Bar Fire/Advocate Records, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

  3.Royd Anderson. The UpStairs Lounge Fire (documentary film), Lake Oaks Studio, June 24, 2013; Clayton Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson: Thirty-Two Deaths in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, 1973 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2014), 60; Paul Breton, “United We Stand” (unpublished manuscript, August 1973), National New Orleans Memorial Fund Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

  4.A. Elwood Willey, “The Upstairs Lounge Fire,” NFPA Journal 68, no. 1 (1974): 18; “General Case Report,” New Orleans Department of Police, August 30, 1973, 29–31, Upstairs Lounge Records, City Archives, New Orleans Public Library; Johnny Townsend, Let the Faggots Burn: The Up Stairs Lounge Fire (self-published through BookLocker.com, 2011), 319.

  5.Lanny Thomas, “Have Labels Overshadowed Twenty-Nine Deaths?,” New Orleans States-Item, June 28, 1973, 16; Chris Segura, “Black, Empty Windows Stare,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 26, 1973, 3; Bill Rushton, “Forgetting the Fire,” Vieux Carré Courier, July 6, 1973, 6; interview with Ulysses Robertson, August 7, 2017.

  6.Rushton, “Forgetting the Fire,” 6; Morris Kight, transcript of phone interview with The Advocate, June 27, 1973, New Orleans Upstairs Bar Fire/Advocate Records, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives; Eric Newhouse, “Smokie,” Associated Press, June 1973.

  7.Segura, “Black, Empty Windows Stare,” 3.

  8.Thomas, “Have Labels Overshadowed.”

  9.Ibid.; Tom W. Smith and Jaesok Son, “Trends in Public Attitudes About Sexual Morality,” National Opinion Research Center, April 2013, 11 (www.norc.org/PDFs/sexmoralfinal_06-21_FINAL.PDF).

  10.“General Case Report,” NOPD, 29, 3, 50–51; Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, 73; Cynthia Ann Savant, Statement to Louisiana Office of State Fire Marshal, August 1, 1974, Louisiana State Archives, Baton Rouge (courtesy of Clayton Delery).

  11.“Gays Begin Relief Funds for Upstairs Fire Victims,” New Orleans Daily Record, June 27, 1973, 1; Vincent Lee, “Gay Leaders Plan Aid for Victims of Bar Fire,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 27, 1973, 14; Kight, transcript of Advocate interview, June 27, 1973.

  12.“Gays Begin Relief Funds,” 1; Perry interview; “Dallas Attorney Slain; Challenges Sex Laws,” The Advocate, August 1, 1973, 14; Lee, “Gay Leaders,” 14; Anderson. The UpStairs Lounge Fire.

  13.Breton, “United We Stand”; Martin St. John, “ ‘A Part of Our Souls Was Ignited … ,’ ” The Advocate, August 1, 1973, 1, 16–17.

  14.“Tragedy in New Orleans” (Up Stairs Lounge flyer), 1973, National New Orleans Memorial Fund Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives; “National Day of Mourning” (Up Stairs Lounge flyer), 1973, National New Orleans Memorial Fund Collection; “The ‘Upstairs Tragedy’ Continues,” Gay Community News, July 5, 1973, 1.

  15.Interview with Henry Kubicki, September 5, 2015; interviews with Richard Everett, September 30, 2016, and July 27, 2015; Henry Kubicki, “Henry Kubicki Account” (unpublished manuscript, November 14, 2013), LGBT Religious Archives Network (http://exhibits.lgbtran.org/exhibits/show/upstairs-lounge-fire), Berkeley, Calif.

  16.Kubicki interview, September 5, 2015; Everett interviews, July 27, 2015, and September 30, 2016; interview with Ronald Rosenthal, June 14, 2016.

  17.Everett interviews, August 25, 2015, September 30, 2016, and July 27, 2015.

  18.Ibid.

  19.Interview with Clancy DuBos, May 18, 2016; Charlie Ferguson, oral history interview with Mark Cave, May 7, 2009, New Orleans Life Story Project, Historic New Orleans Collection; Bill Rushton, “New Orleans Toll Thirty-Two; Arson Evidence Cited,” The Advocate, August 1, 1973, 1; “Press Club’s D
edication Held,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 1, 1973, 67.

  20.Lee, “Gay Leaders,” 14; Bill Rushton, “Fire Tragedy Confused Both Straights, Gays,” The Advocate, July 18, 1973, 2; Bruce Nolan and Chris Segura, “Memorial for Fire Dead Has Forgiveness Theme,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 26, 1973, 3.

  21.Interview with Milton Mary, August 22, 2016; interview with Ronald LeBoeuf, April 15, 2015.

  22.Perry and Swicegood, Don’t Be Afraid Anymore, 94; Chris Segura, “ ‘Positive Identifications’ Made for Nine Fire Victims,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 27, 1973, 3.

  23.Breton, “United We Stand.”

  24.Edwin Edwards to A. T. Screen, June 10, 1970, Records of the Human Relations Committee, City Archives; Breton, “United We Stand.”

  25.Breton, “United We Stand.”

  26.Ibid.; Segura, “ ‘Positive Identifications’ Made,” 3.

  27.Perry and Swicegood, Don’t Be Afraid Anymore, 91; Rushton, “New Orleans Toll,” 6; interview with Meyers, January 26, 2016.

  28.Ed Martinez, “The Fire at the Lounge: Where Was Mercy?,” Nola Express, July 27, 1973; Perry interview; Perry and Swicegood, Don’t Be Afraid Anymore, 91; interview with Brendan Flaherty, November 12, 2016.

  29.Scott Ellis, Madame Vieux Carré: The French Quarter in the Twentieth Century (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), 68; interview with Roberts Batson, July 11, 2014; Perry and Swicegood, Don’t Be Afraid Anymore, 92; Delery-Edwards, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, 79; Perry interview; Check signed by Morris Kight, Security Pacific National Bank—Wilshire & Union Branch. 1973, National New Orleans Memorial Fund Collection, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives; National New Orleans Memorial Fund, sample legal letter, 1973, National New Orleans Memorial Fund Collection.

  10: Firetraps

  1.Interview with Troy Perry, December 2, 2014; “Blaze Victims’ Memorial Set,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 30, 1973, 11; “ ‘Pray for Those Who Did This,’ ” The Advocate, July 18, 1973, 8; William Richardson, letter to the editor, The Voice of Integrity 1, no. 2 (Summer 1991), LGBT Religious Archives Network (http://exhibits.lgbtran.org/exhibits/show/upstairs-lounge-fire), Berkeley, Calif.