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Chapter 1: What happened during the Upstairs Lounge massacre?
16 minutes before the upstairs lounge became a crime scene, it was just a room full of people singing around a piano, drinking and catching up, when suddenly a buzzer goes off. At this bar, nobody got in unless someone let them inside. It was a small, second-story gay bar, and the door stayed locked at street level to keep the patrons safe. If you wanted to come up, you had to buzz in.
But just before 8pm, on a hot summer night, that buzzer sounded. Then again, and again, and again. Someone down there was desperate to get in. But not for a drink, and not for a sing-along. Because just 16 minutes later, that same room would be unrecognisable. The music would stop, and 32 people would be dead. Hello, and welcome to Outlaw Podcast.
I'm Eleanor Neal, and in today's episode, we're in New Orleans in 1973, where one of the deadliest mass killings of LGBTQ plus people in American history has just taken place. And yet, somehow, despite the scale of it, it's still, to this day, a case that so many people have never heard of.
32 people lost their lives in a place that, for so many of them, had been safe, familiar and full of community. But in the days that followed, the horror of that night was met with silence from people in power, cruelty from parts of the public and a level of indifference that made the loss even harder to comprehend. Victims were mocked,
Families were left without answers, some churches refused to hold funerals, and for decades one of the most devastating tragedies in LGBTQ plus history was allowed to fall out of wider public memory. So today we're going to talk about who those 32 people were, what the upstairs lounge meant to them, and what happened that night.
and why remembering this case properly still matters more than 50 years later. And this is also our first episode in Pride Month. And look, obviously, we love the parades, we love the celebration, the representation, the joy of Pride Month. All of that really matters. But at the end of the day, Pride is still a protest.
It's still a reminder that there is so much injustice that has happened and so much injustice that is still being fought today. As many of you know, I myself am a part of the LGBTQ plus community. So many of you are a part of this community and even if you're not, I know so many of you care so deeply about the people who are.
So this month on Outlaw, we're going to be centering LGBTQ plus cases, stories and campaigns. We're going to remember those who need remembering, fight for what still needs fighting for and keep the stories, campaigns and people that we've lost in conversation.
Now, as we get into this episode, I just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean absolutely no harm or disrespect to anyone that we talk about in today's case. This episode has been made with the utmost care to not only honour and memorialise those who lost their lives, but to also recognise the profound grief and loss their loved ones continue to endure.
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Chapter 2: How did the LGBTQ+ community respond to the Upstairs Lounge tragedy?
Truly a hotspot for it, which I'm sure you can imagine would attract a particular crowd. But outside of that, it was a place for creatives, for movers and shakers, for the carefree and fun-loving. And this general attitude meant that LGBT people felt slightly safer putting roots down here versus other places.
At the end of the day though, New Orleans was still full of oppression and persecution, with the need to constantly be looking over your shoulder, but it did have some respite for gay people. And though the upstairs lounge was once a hustler's bar, like I said, the new owner, Phil, wanted to change its reputation so that it could be seen as this reputable, legal, safe establishment.
He turned it into more of a social club. It was just a lounge where people could go to drink and meet up and dance and sing and chat. Sex workers were actually banned from operating there, especially inside the premises. Say goodbye to cruising. There would be no funny business going on in the upstairs lounge. People would actually get kicked out if they tried.
Philip knew the risks that his patrons took every time they entered a gay bar, so he wanted them to feel as safe as possible in his. It was supposed to be just good, wholesome fun for the gay community, to feel comfortable in each other's presence the same way that any straight person would feel in any regular bar.
Once the reputation of the venue began to shift, Philip was able to secure the first ever permit from the city that allowed same-sex dancing. Like, how incredible is that? This was probably the only building in New Orleans where our community could touch, hold, dance with each other without the fear of being arrested or worse. Philip really seemed like a fabulous owner for such a venue.
He really, truly cared for his patrons and their safety. of course when it came to their sexualities, but even as simple as caring that the building was physically safe to be in. Because under its previous management, while it was a hustler's bar, the structural safety had been very questionable. Corners had definitely been cut and so a lot of revision work was needed.
And now I'm going to try and explain the layout of the bar, which will become pretty important to help you like visualise how all of this went down. So its front door was street level, ground level, the outside door and as soon as it opened it was straight onto a big wooden staircase that would lead you all the way up to another door that would open into the lounge.
So it's front door at the street, staircase, lounge door and then you go inside. The staircase was like its own little room I guess and that little section for the stairs was probably the worst part. the most dangerous. It had exposed pipes and wires, it kind of looked like an abandoned building, like kind of horror movie vibes.
It was going to be a big and expensive task to like actually fix it all properly, something that the establishment would have to save up and plan for, so in the meantime they had tried to just like pretty it up, they put vibrant colourful materials everywhere, like draped them over these exposed pipes to make it
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Chapter 3: What was the significance of the Upstairs Lounge for its patrons?
Since the fire was in such a confined space, all the hot smoke and the toxic gas had settled at the top of the room in a gas pocket. And as soon as Luther went and opened that metal door, the fire and all of that super hot gas collided with the clean oxygen in the bar and something like a chemical explosion took place. A literal fireball burst into the lounge.
The pressure alone would have knocked Luther to the ground while those flames just flew past him and began igniting everything in the room all at once. Carpets, curtains, furniture, people's clothes, their hair.
Those in the direct path of the initial explosion would have been burned instantly while the rest of the patrons are suddenly watching this huge engulfing fire sweeping towards them at an alarming speed. This all happened within seconds, let me remind you. People are literally mid-sip of their drinks when suddenly they're faced with escaping an inferno. It was horrifying. It was disorienting.
Half of the people in there are in total shock as to where this had come from or how this had happened and very quickly the room begins to fill with black smoke so no one can see either. Luther, who had been hit with the fireball first, managed to crawl to the window that had the fire exit.
It was right by the entry door, close to where he was, but it would probably only be a matter of seconds until that safety exit was blocked by the fire right next to it. This man was so incredibly brave, by the way. He was on fire. His skin was literally burning off already as he is trying to save himself and his friends.
His adrenaline kicked in and he was able to grab a chair and smash the exit window and crawl out onto the fire escape. And he didn't just get himself out there either, he was able to get his best friend Jean along with another man. All three of them, mind you, are on fire at this point.
When they got outside and onto that roof, the men managed to pat the flames off of Jean but that wasn't gonna work for the men who had no choice but to just jump down to the ground two stories below in order to drop and roll the flames off. People from the bar next door had already begun rushing buckets of water outside when they noticed the fire, which they then poured over these men.
But even though they had physically gotten themselves to safety, both of those men would still lose their lives from the injuries that they had sustained. Of that group of three, Jean was the only survivor. She managed to climb a ladder that led her onto a ledge of a neighbouring roof where she remained until help arrived.
By snapping into action that day, smashing the window, and prioritising patting the flames off of Jean, Luther had saved her life that night. She was left with life-changing burns from the incident, and no doubt a whole lot of mental trauma, but thanks to Luther's bravery, Jean would live on.
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