Gay bar tragedy: Search renewed to find victims of 1973 Upstairs Lounge fire

Before the 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.

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