Many churches refused to provide memorial services for the victims. After that, it faded from the general collective memory of New Orleans. That video is the only report concerning the attack to make national news. Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar.” The local media discussed the tragedy for a day.
The press quoted a cab driver who hoped “the fire burned their dresses off.” Another woman exclaimed “the Lord had something to do with this.” One radio host quipped, “What will they bury the ashes of queers in? Fruit jars.” When questioned about the investigation, Major Henry Morris, chief detective of the New Orleans Police Department, nonchalantly stated, “We don’t even know these papers belonged to the people we found them on. The media reaction surrounding the event was harsh even through the lens of cultural relativism. The casualties included over a third of the local MCC chapter. Thirty-two of the sixty patrons did not survive. An odor of rotten flesh permeated the block. Witnesses reporting hearing helpless screams from those still trapped inside. Others who managed to squeeze through the bars fell stories below and sustained lifelong injuries. His charred remains were inhumanely left untouched and visible throughout the initial investigation. MCC Reverend Bill Larson died attempting to escape between the window bars.
Their scorched corpses were found entwined together. One in particular was the MCC assistant pastor George Mitchell, who hurried back into the fiery chaos to save his partner, Louis Broussard. When the fire started consuming the bar, Buddy Rasmussen, the bartender, quickly escorted many throughout an unmarked back door. The image epitomized the city’s negligent mentality toward the victims. MCC Reverend Bill Larson’s remains were visible throughout the investigation. During the Upstairs Lounge attack, this security entrapped them. Many gathered in bars that protected from outsiders – heavy doors, barred windows, minimal entrances. Southern Decadence was merely a party of about forty friends that started just a year prior. Open gay pride parades had not yet reached the city. The French Quarter had around two dozen gay bars, but they certainly never advertised as such. During this time, New Orleans’ gay community mostly existed underground. The MCC churches in Los Angeles and Nashville were set aflame earlier that year, but no deaths occurred. The Upstairs Lounge was temporarily hosting the New Orleans chapter of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), the nation’s first gay church. It is the largest known massacre of gay people in our nation’s history. Thirty-two men were brutally murdered most burned alive. The man that opened the steel door was greeted by a hurling Molotov cocktail that quickly engulfed the staircase and spread in seconds. At 7:56pm, the buzzer that signaled a cab sounded. On a Sunday afternoon on June 24, 1973, around sixty patrons were drinking at the Upstairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans’ French Quarter.