Gay bar tragedy: Search renewed to find victims of 1973 Upstairs Lounge fire
Pulse nightclub tragedy in 2016, the worst mass killing of people at a gay bar in the US took place in New Orleans in 1973.A Sunday afternoon arson attack on a gay bar called the Upstairs Lounge resulted in the deaths of 32 people.However, unlike Pulse, this attack took place in a very different era.
When it became clear the tragedy had hit a gay bar, city officials acted with a lack of sympathy for those who died. Some families did not even come forward to claim bodies, such was the stigma of having a gay relative.Local churches refused to hold memorial services.
Outside of Louisiana, the tragedy was soon forgotten about.A handful of people who died have never been identified. Four of the bodies were buried by authorities in an unmarked grave in the local “potter’s field”.
Sadly, a record of exactly where those bodies were buried was lost during the Hurricane Katrina tragedy of 2005.It wasn’t until 2013 that New Orleans erected a permanent memorial to mark the tragedy, and acknowledged how badly served the victims had been at the time.
