so i didn't think anything unusual about it but i had a wonderful childhood i was in the boy scouts, i played baseball, i swam , i had a wonderful childhood . >> larry elder, "a lot like me: a father and son's journey to reconciliation". thanks for joining us on book tv. it's been my pleasure. >> book tv is on twitter and facebook and we want to hear from you. us, twitter.com/tv or post a comment on our facebook page, facebook.com/book tv. [inaudible] >> good evening. good evening. welcome to give you books,

i'm tom leuenberger, owner of the store and we are here tonight to learn about this great book, tender thoughts. the untold story of the upstairs lounge and the rise of gabe relations so i'm not going to say much about it because our author will do that but you probably know that this is the 45th anniversary ofthe fire , june 24 was the day so we're just a few days after that. and in the last few days i've talked to a few people to tell them about the event and they said we saw the fire anybody in here , anybody in the room here who was either their or who saw it? so 45 years, that such a long time and it is also is a serious time that many of us can relate to. much has changed in 45 years and will hear about that.

and 45 years ago this story was largely off the page. we have a lot of people to thank for putting it back on the page and i'm just going to step out of the way and turn itover to him, please give him a warm welcome . >>. [applause] can you guys hear me all right? my name is robert fiedler and i'm the author of tinderbox, the untold story of the fire and the rise of gay liberation. it's a work of nonfiction of civil rights history about a notoriously untold fire that took place at a gay bar a few blocks away . that direction, a few minutes away on the border of the famous rent order. tinderbox is also a meditation on the consequences of closeted life

in america and by closeted i mean homosexual, hiding from public view in a shared conspiracy to turn away. by shared i mean heterosexual and homosexual from the time of the 1970s all conspiring not like rex but with what was in front of everyone's noses which set the stage for a lot of what happened here. the off fire i to place at a gay bar called the upstairs lounge . claimed 32 lives and injured 15 others. on the night of june 24, so 45 years ago lastweekend . no culprit was ever publicly name or charge for these murders and get 43 years later in 2016 when an armed citizen named omar martin done that down 49 people and injured 53 others in a gay nightclub in orlando called pulse, suddenly a bygone tragedy in new orleans became resurrected in public memory. old photos of the upstairs lounge begins with viral on social media platformshurting

stories appeared in news outlets . such as the new york times, daily beast which altogether cited that fire in new orleans as a kind of antecedent to orlando like another classic example of loanable violence striking the lgbt community. the pulse nightclub shooting will be publicly recognized by president obama, federal buildings through their flags half-mast. it was memorialized nationally, the historic from new orleans fire that i write it up did not receive the dignity of the time and i was upset and consumed with the question, why would one event he so acknowledged and the other so swept under the rug. it's a forgotten tragedy, stuck in 1973, go summer sunday at a popular bar called the upstairs lounge, call so because it's secluded second-story location acceptable only by twisting

stairway and an out-of-the-way street call either the gives it a certain degree of privacy for a gentleman seeking gentlemen, a certain kind of company. this twisting stairwell cloaked in cloth was a lot like entering a portal in time. up, up and away. from the outside world and into your favorite socialclub . that particular night, it attracted a larger than usual crowd of 90 blue-collar patrons and this was when gay culture was very early on, very nascent and it sorted themselves out into these sort of archetypes that exist now. bears, tweets, silver boxes, all these terms do not exist with any degree of popularity. days at this time period contained multitudes and they could display a range of hyper masculine or feminine

characteristics that could turn on the dial and they learned to do so to live without undue strain in a world where they have to keep their straight face on. these men were veterans with multiple wars where they could not be out while they were serving. a lot of these men were steelworkers or law enforcement. so anyway, these blue-collar gay patrons were all gathered for the biggest special of the week called the beer bust . one dollar for two hours of unlimited draft beer. but the returnable $.50 deposit for the picture, this was new orleans in the 70s so imagine laughing and singing and bartenders slinging drinks in a clouded space, a piano player who takes requests pounds on the keys of a white baby grand piano. these men have a particular song they would like to sing

despite the typical broadway tunes that became something, they would sing the song drunkenly to the point of tears and it became something of an anthem of the upstairs lounge crowd called united we stand by the brotherhood of man . i think they stand for a little bit more. united we stand, divided we fall and a car back should ever be against the wall we will be together, together you and i and they would lift their glasses and toast each other, expressing solidarity at a time when the simple act of being who they were composed existential danger and also to things could happen if people found out where they were they were singing that song. they could be evicted, fired from their job, rejected by their families. you can imagine inside the upstairs lounge couples congregating insidethe bar, it would have been very

radical. they had been joined together in what had been called holy unions . these were early same-sex marriages, spiritual congregations unrecognized by legal entities of the era authorized by a den over radical gay affirming christian ministry called the metropolitan community church which had a branch in new orleans that conducted sometimes religious services and yes, holy union receptions at the upstairs lounge. so that particular night at the lounge, men were in the bar holding hands, doing this out there so for the 70s. but there were occasionally sneaking a kiss although the bar did have rules against more flagrant forms of affection. this was a bathhouse with men parading around in tiles although the sexual expression per se was not frowned upon. there were posters on the walls for example, a photo of mark with his art speedo and his seminal nose, burt

reynolds, i don't know if any of you have seen thispicture of him lying naked on a bearskin rug . those kind of images. so it wasn't frowned upon per se and there was indeed a bathhouse down the street from the upstairs lounge if so desired for a glory hole in the upstairs lounge bathroom that facilitated previewing of themerchandise. but all that fun and fully , carefully inside this oasis, the outside world being dominated by heterosexual prejudice and even inside, this is where i get in trouble with rights organizations, even inside being tempered by the fear of significance getting gay man in trouble ratting out other game in police or if romantically projected by our particular cutie who you were jealous of, dropping a nickel in a pay phone to alert employers or family members of an individual'slocation and activities . this did happen.

finally, to paraphrase shakespeare, these violent delights have violent hands. picture the front staircase door opening and u-turn, expecting to read a friend and the flames suddenly shoots into the room as it launched from a flamethrower leaving 43 feet of breath a grand piano and menacing at it, chewing up wallpaper and decorations and burning hair, clothes , eating away almost half of those confronting you. and they visualize that 30 seconds to choose which way to run. as people screamed and bodies he and perhaps being separated from a committed lover or alongtime friend who doesn't yet realize this is an emergency and therefore is going to make it outside . trying to fathom 29 friends on, rendered into groups of carbon now in a pile of bodies that emergency workers

described as the worst thing they ever seen. and fire that burned for less than 20 minutes with three more doomed to advertising debts in a hospital board. and the mayor remaining out of townfor two weeks , the catholic church using the cathedral to hold a public memorial for the upstairs lounge then. three of the bodies burned so bad they could never be identified. >> and they were very without markers in potters field and then worse, one identified the victim, a world war ii veteran named ferris the law and embraced by the upstairs lounge crowd, a man who landed at normandy beating back the nazi counteroffensive at the battle of the bulge who was named a last-minute fire victim by an anonymous caller who was too afraid to say more. what happened to him, authorities buried that man in the potters field with the other unnamed bodies.

but here we imagine ourselves compassionately, sympathetically into the destruction and devastation of a special brotherhood, by a cadre of blue-collar men been enjoying a unique kind of fellowship and his bar. i had to realize and acknowledge the story as i was researching this but it's not where most day new orleans would be in 1970. this is what i had to understand is to reconstruct what happened in a vastly different america in a vastly different new orleans than this one. i do not want to make this mistake and i seen this with a lot of books, i did not want to start writing a book of history and then the writinga book of activism . by transplanting the values into a path where they do not necessarily belong to the upstairs lounge patrons were the exception, not the rule of their guarded. [bleep] for they lived the love in a highly

idiosyncratic real-world that concocted a unique way of handling underground gay community riding in the city by 1973, conservatively estimated at 60,000 homosexuals of new orleans than 600,000 residents, like 10 percent of the population. new orleans had a unique way of handling that phenomenon gentlemen prefer gentlemen, ladies who prefer ladies, ladies who prefer all that different stop. these individuals were permitted to do whatever they wanted to do in an out-of-the-way place as long as they did not the dreaded word that starts with age." it all in a euphemism of being an eligible bachelor or a millionaire bachelor because that seemed to help more people being dispensed her roommates, two females being spinster roommates or two males longtime companions living in perhaps what was

called in new orleans and town marriage. uptown marriage would be to gentlemen romantically and sexually involved with each other who have lives who were often times best friends and new at children who often times go to thebest school. these two families spend weekends and vacations together, it's an age-old institution thatexists in the 1970s . were , homosexual would often adopt aliases or use nicknames whenever they went out to help protect themselves against the liabilities of what would happen if they were arrested for a crime against nature. for example upstairs lounge gave patron was a pastor of the local ncc church known as reverend bill larson was found william roscoe larison. he's slightly changed the name, why? i have to figure this out. for a practical reason, place a buffer between himself and the risks of his lifestyle.

and it would prevent news of interest to you. in the prime blotter times from drifting back to his employer. blowing back to his conservative family in ohio , the date for those people did not attempt to locate in here and his wife in new orleans and perhaps even try to retreat in and do the thing here, perhaps locking up with the black sheep of family at a time when damon often disappeared in this way, mental institutions. incidentally, reverend bill larson tracked the window bars of the upstairs lounge. with his last breath, he seemed the words of god know. and then hisbody was left there . soaked in its gruesome final proposed, for hours. >> it became a spectacle for the media and drunken onlookers and afterwards, his mother refused to accept his

remains so after the fire, thesealiases and nicknames, bill larson , the deacon of the new orleans church, his legal name was duane george mitchell at the upstairs lounge, this would all hamper efforts to have the coroner id the victim but ordinarily, through these mechanisms, these convoluted methods of compartmentalization not only did hayes remain safe in new orleans, but then the average indian have to acknowledge what was happening in front of everybody's noses . and they also appear outstanding when they did choose to violently punish those who did point out what was happening in the underbelly alongside all of the other bystanders the city had managed and which it right inthe presence of the city for decades and centuries . prostitution, gambling, drugs , jazz when it and saw me.

homosexuality in 1973 new orleans was by and large elderly (all that they're not speak its name. meaning that most homosexuals were so privately paranoid about being caught by police who would beat you down ifyou did not bribe them first . most homosexuals were still so discreet that they stuck to private parties and soirces and work wouldn't be celebrated as to be seen at the upstairs lounge on beer bust night. so let's deepen our understanding of the upstairs lounge fire by interrogating first the society that created the conditions in which such a tragedy would occur and that means nothing i have to do as a queer offer and it's something i didn't want to do which is a bit painful but you have to list the mental guardrails of today and step away from a world really where the majority of citizens believe homosexuality should be legal

. call it an acceptable lifestyle. see their same-sex marriage and would encourage to same-sex parents adopting a child. to deepen our understanding you have to rebuild it as it existed in the past so let's enter the world of 1973, not just with the scale of homosexual tolerance but with the scale and break it. there are majority of people, everyone you know and respected hesitated to speak the word homosexual because it was so alarming and embarrassing. if you spoke the word you would hear crickets times. to see the word in a newspaper cause or reader to scandaltheir subscription if it was on the front page . aids was not a work tolerated either because game and having a gay old time. henry finally stood up to his father who was a bullying personality and came out to him i saying dad, i'm gay and

his father responded without any sense of irony, well, i'm not very gay about it. humans happy. the sort of person that spoke ecologist and psychiatrist universally agreed that it was a psychiatric disorder and could not experience joy so that word felt like it had been appropriated by radicals who would call them sexual psychopaths and very few newspapers if any, especially in this time would print the word gay outside of condescending quotation marks so most every american in 1973 still believed a homosexual to be like a social subversive, sort of like a communist agent but in a more private context, degrading the foundations of this great land. more than 60 percent of respondents in a car time magazine article called homosexuality harmful to the american way of life. out of 10 americans in 1973

believed homosexuality in whole to be always wrong. when pulling companies even bothered to ask this question, a question so obvious because asking someone how you felt in about homosexuality in 1973 was asking how do you feel about assault and battery? how do you feel about extortion, how do you feel about crime? a majority of citizens believe homosexuality was rightly illegal, punishable by nuisance laws that should govern work, housing, public accommodation and private bedroom behavior and more than a third of americans had hesitated on whether a homosexual should be permitted to speak in public . they contacted the idea of first amendment rights for homosexuals why? why didn't seem like a question, a trick question to someone? it was because it would be

the modern equivalent of giving a bullhorn to a schizophrenic. why get a platform to the mentally ill? movies like deliverance in the theaters nationally and around new orleans which portray the active male sex in a squeal like a big context of violence rate. a strange and frightening intercourse. foisted by wicked on the unsuspecting. and bought capable of robbing , a brother, a son. this is when it was believed so imagine then in this climate of a second-story bar on a corsican street quarter bordering the french quarter, exploded with flames. the windows they force people to pay attention whistling outwards, not just through the french quarter but integrator new orleans and the pages of the new york times for the southern civil-rightsjournalist roy reed's reports and across the

ocean to the times london , to dublin, to the international herald tribune in paris, australia even. until they discovered nature bird and the nature of the patients that well the bar had dropped off immediately but in the immediacy of the arrest drew hundreds of onlookers in new orleans, nearly all of the cities emergency workers. bodies are trapped in the window bars and toppling out injured, requiring emergency treatment or a try this evening by runningthe streets trailing snow. living away from the claims that are sometimes on the back of their heads . getting away from a treacherous situation that would out the greatest secret in their lives. visualize the average new orleans and attending to learn with astonishment about this bar called the upstairs lounge was what was called a gay bar. right?

one of approximately 20 homosexual dens around the french quarter and it was rumored burned down by a sexually conflicted, disaffected patron who was known to many of the victims. how confusing is back. it was violently injected minutes before the fire began and then consider the humiliation for new orleans and a live and let live culture beloved by so many, the paris of the south, the easy fourth knowledge a large gay presence. lurking among the population where all the other prices are kept great and a question to the coroner. these individuals were dwelling in one of the bars where tourists and conventioneers were supposed to lay down green. shocked and unable to muster sympathy, many locals let off steam next day my making jokes on this to about those charred corpses of men who they felt and disrespected their bodies soprofoundly in life .

i'll tell you some of the jokes. you're the one about the flaming queens. i hope they burn their dresses off. what's the best way to dispose of fruit? read on and jars. many applauded the democratic mayor of new orleans who in many ways was a forerunner in the arena of civil rights and a quiet supporter of his closeted gay friends and hired product leadership circles for his wisdom and staying out of town in your rather than calling the law by returning to the upstairs lounge fire and where mayor landry did return, weeks later, too late to the practical help to survivors of the wives and children and victims, because this was a time when game and marry women in an attempt to alleviate your sexual burden, it was believed that the intercession of the divine in matrimony could miraculously you are you of many of those marriages, obviously ended in a predictable way, divorce.

anyway, it could be of help to the survivors or wise instrument of the survivors and mayor landry then in a press conference on salt the city of his behavior by saying in relation to the homosexual angle of the fire and began to be pressed by journalists named bill russian status, he was pressed by the journalist about a homosexual and his son was i was not aware of any lack of concern in the community. the roman catholic church in a city so catholic the archbishop was called new orleans denied several catholics who perish, perhaps participating in what were called mortal sins are very rights in some cases and decline to permit the public memorial memorial to be held at st. louis cathedral, the city's holy basilica. then it was the archbishop seemingly moved by guilt did speak up weeks later in a column of the archdiocese

catholic newspaper, a tiny paragraph attached to one of his columns on human rights and in the smallest of techs after a page of a 100 words, i couldn't believe it but in 1973 archbishop hannah did speak about the upstairs lounge and he surprisingly revealed the correct number of dead andthe fact that the fire seemed intentional . this was a man who'd been following the news closely . reports of the police inquiry can name a culprit for the fire dropped off nationally within a matter of days. locally, it took a bit longer than those dropped off two. most didn't even learn the name of the chief suspect who had been in violation of probation the night he drunkenly entered the upstairs lounge on beer bust

knife only to provoke a fight, get clocked, have his jaw broken and the arrested, drag down the front stairs reading what was heard by two people. i'm going to burn you all out. that's 30 minutes before the fire began. so the deadliest fire on record in new orleans history, the worst mass murder of homosexuals in history, a record that stood for 43 years, a record never meant to be broken was worth little more to the city a few days of front-page headlines and a proverbial paragraph on a newspaper. no one wanted to talk about the deadliest event in new orleans in 1973 even six months later and this seems fitting to the average citizen working hard to make this event and its legacy and the trauma of this event,this pressure cooker event disappear for years was too confusing , too gruesome . into the aids crisis of the 1980s when more upstairs lounge survivors would die

before they could tell their story. no public memorials would mark the anniversary of this event in that decade. then in 1995, the 22nd anniversary, a game minister made a controversial choice, dexter breck was a minister in new orleans so there's a bit of a threat there but he made a controversial choice even in 1995 to speak about the upstairs lounge fire in a story reported in the times picayune and many of his own gay affirming congregation were upset for doing so. and finally in 2003 dexter breck after eight years of what was very much a lonely effort made and lost a lot of different friends, he had to spend a lot of time gathering allies and eight years is a lot of time for something to happen and dexter lost a lover quite suddenly to a heart attack and it almost

devastated him and he almost had to give up the crusade, yet he succeeded in 2003 in winning and other local allies and the monetary support to raise $5000 and finally lay a bronze plaque on the sidewalk for the victims. on the 30th anniversary of the fire, i don't know if you guys have seen, 30 inches by 30 inches,i've measured it , and i'm convinced most of the scholarship that occurred around the upstairs lounge fire has been due to the fact that that monument is there, raising awareness about the upstairs lounge fire every single day . so walk back from 2003 to hear, 15 years in the same century when the upstairs lounge monument, that plaque would be vandalized on numerous occasions . and into the present day where one brave family, a family of upstairs lounge victims and i don't know if

any of you have been seeing the headlines but i want to address it, that family is still carrying on the brave fight against the new orleans preoperatively to exhume their beloved family member from the neglected decrepit potters field where he lives to this day to bring him home to california for a proper military funeral . what's so strange about this event is the upstairs lounge fire is contemporary news. with all this context, even with the existence of those who prefer to look away from the fire in the present day, consider the upstairs lounge now for the last time. as it smolders in the past and see what truly happens. see a group of bar patrons living in society within it in a characteristic that they could not rid of themselves so they wereforced to live invisibly . then , those already

invisible men were then murdered in an intentional fire. then the memory of those murdered men for decades was wiped from the slate of history and here's what's most difficult for me being a query historian and a gay person but try to see who you are i would likely be in such a society at that time and be honest, be honest about the prospects of who you and i worry in a world where less than several hundred men or women out and proud by contemporary standards. you would likelybe , i would likely be, i would likely be among the hundreds of thousands of straight residents or the tens of thousands of closeted gay residents wanting their secret lives toreturn to normal . and with their hands on a powerful social eraser, the closet. which could make that time a burning building vanish. along with all of its voices.

>> shakespeare once wrote men are their kindness and that was as true in the 1600s as today except for a little sexism. but history reminds us to never be self-satisfied in the present moment. most do not consider the coincidence of our allies often times with our deepest biases and beliefs, especially the unexamined ones and the bias i had to get over when writing this book is the common bias in storytelling, you've probably heard it before. this one. the art of history is long but it bends toward justice. it's a beautiful statement from mlk. obama made a wonderful speech about this. there's nothing scientifically valid or anthropologically proven, society follow sideways. think about this in real relation to the upstairs lounge.

we carry all of human nature with us, all of the time. and that's why it's important to occasionally take the temperature of the societyand the dimensions of our own character and to borrow a line from our brothers and sisters in recovery , to be fearless about that moral inventory. this exercise of history isn't a shame you or me or denigrate our species or a great city that i've come to love but to hold up a mirror that enables us to look human nature in the face. as the upstairs loungewasn't out of the ordinary experience , we stripped the mask away showing human nature in a waydoesn't like to be seen . in the act of believing and even without the ordinary filters of politeness, tradition, routine. what happens when all people have to go by is whatever passes for critical thinking, common sense of the era and their basis. i close with this thought in

relation to what we discussed about the society that created the conditions for the upstairs lounge fire. between the upstairs lounge fire in 1973 and shooting in 2016, a powerful institution in america, the closet had widespread conspiracy to turn away from all things homosexual, it failed miserably and as a result, almost millions of homosexual citizens ventured from the shadows into the open. what happened to these folks now in this climate of tribalism and political entrenchment? it's unknown. we are americans, we are profoundly out of power. living off the kindness and largess temporarily of a new belief which is really an old elite when you think about it, in spite of the vibrancy of game, despite modern game is like new orleans on

southern decadence weekend but here's the thing on this tour, many gays and gay allies that i meet love the party but continue to hate the politics. and behave as if keeping their heads down will hopefully mean their fates will not match the fates of other oppressed groups and can we name them? transgender americans. is this crouching posture a temporary survival tactic or is it an ill wind from a corrupt and violent past, perhaps from 1973, beckoning us back to the closet? one wonders. i wonder and i often end this presentation with that difficult question because i love holding straight audiences accountable but being here and queer and queer allied company i'm reminded of another powerful certainty which i think beats in the heart of our national ideal and also in the heart of the city and that is the

power of truth and reconciliation. the power of american history to rejoin brother to brother over the wall, stranger to stranger across the aisle. i think of the letter that the upstairs lounge victim, reverend bill larson who grew up abusing an orphanage before infamously burning to death in the upstairs lounge bar window both for abusers at the orphanage grew up in ohio. i come to you by letter, he wrote. to give thanks, honor and praise to those who encouraged me in thosethings i set out to do no matter how large and how small , who gave me anoutlook on life that others are envious of . these were christian words from someone raised by the state because his mother lived in a shack on the city dump and then rejected him reedit from a clergyman who was once a scared boy punished by county officials or a sex problem.

so let us strive to find the strength and the grace of bill larson by looking our past squarely in the face and then having the courage to acknowledge that place that we are broken and joining hands between us and attempt to set down pain and remember the lyrics of fellowship that upstairs lounge patrons like bill larson were singing with their friends at a bar in seconds before a fire claimed them all and iimplore you to hear them , they were singing united we stand, divided we fall. thank you. [applause]

>> did we have time for any questions? any questions? >> during the time before this gathering began, i had time to read the first introduction and maybe the first chapter and you made the point that social progress is often achieved or generally achieved by sacrifices and you cited a number of examples. and i wondered if not exactly on the topic of desire but i wonder what you think about the propositions that the lgbt acceptance by a broader society was greatly accelerated by hiv?

and the tens of thousands who died? >> it wasn't a universal gateway to acceptance but it did become a method where many family members were reconciled with other family members through the tendency they develop by becoming caretakers or ad hoc or immature hospice individuals. i think that did come into play in the midst of the aids crisis but sadly, you can look at the history of american society. we balance larger freedoms against our securities and we tend to let the freedoms have really the priorities. and often times in these circumstances like this, especially when you think about aids crisis and how long it took for authorities to take that pandemic seriously, how many had to die even before there were

citizen scientists started doing voluntary human trials that enabled a lot of the really but some of the most powerful work to end up being done . we sometimes, it takes unfortunately a death or many before an event is treated as seriously by authorities and by power .. >> .. >> if they were kicked out of not necessarily targeting the gay community. it seems like they were targeting more of the outside community. >> it is not a 1 - 1 parallel. i was surprised by that.

it was half way through writing his book. and my feathers got ruffled a little bit. when the photos were going viral and there is a new york times column and jim's down was drawing a 1 - 1 connection between those two events. i am still puzzled. i don't think they match up. i do think it in the public understanding of the nightclub shooting and the trauma and the overwhelming sense of grief of how do we deal with this unimaginable scope of death. i think people were grasping for anything to hold onto. in that moment for some reason, the upstairs lounge fire had a certain amount of contacts for people to understand there is a

basis for this in american society in history. i argued that with pulse to be more immediate. it took the upstairs lounge decades were public memorial to be held them for public members to know that their relatives were buried in a potters field. where the reckoning with pulse was so quick. you had the mayor of -- and the governor of florida. everyone in the leadership position was making statements of sympathy. that never happened for the upstairs lounge. in a sense, the upstairs lounge could provide that degree of context and a foothold for those grieving. i think it was strangely enough not a comfort, but it provided some traction in that moment where they felt people were standing on whatever capacity

for solid ground again. i will give you an example. many upstairs lounge survivors i interviewed, i had to spend about a three-year e-mail text message and they had to decide if they wanted to talk to me. they do not know if they wanted talk about the worst thing that happened. the results of the interview he not be cathartic. after the polls nightclub shooting, in some cases those individuals who are so on the fence with me before called me. there need was replaced with urgency. it meant a lot to me because i knew how much it was going to hurt for them to tell me the story. i knew they wanted to tell the story because they thought it could be of comfort to someone who is hurting worse. in a sense, that is the

relationship between the upstairs lounge impulse. it's almost emotional or sense of comradeship. i do not think the events exactly pair side-by-side. did that answer your question? >> think you. >> thank you. i was looking at the racial dynamics of the lounge. and wondering if black people in new orleans would be accepted. how are they functioning? >> the question was about how did racial dynamics play at the upstairs lounge in terms of the culture and larger bar culture of the gay bar culture?

>> racial dynamics, in a sense the gay community was not even a community yet in new orleans. it was so depressed and beaten-down that they believed it was the individual burden. they cannot relate to people. the community itself was highly stratified by class, the upstairs lounge was not an establishment. people who drank up there were blue-collar gay people. they oftentimes live paycheck to paycheck as opposed to others were tennessee williams strength. where as opposed to the private soirées that other patrons may

not have ever known about. or they gave mardi gras crews which were very expensive to join. so you had a class distinctions and class burgers were a lot of people drink and they would not see dead at the upstairs lounge. that would be a misadventure or your friends would laugh at you. racial dynamics played into that. by and large, blacks did not drink at white to gay bars. this is what i found. they did have a black gay bar called the safari lounge which was a second-story gay bar one block further. after the upstairs lounge it was weird, one of the only concrete actions the city took immediately after the burning of the upstairs lounge was the closing of the safari lounge. first opposing fire code violations. the real upshot of that was the closing of a black gay bar.

in essence, split and victimized twice because they were homosexual and black. at the upstairs lounge there were a handful of black patrons that would drink there. one was reginald adams who is welcomed and embraced by the crowd and quite beloved. he was dating a woman who is now a very famous new york trade queen. they were a couple in interracial couple and also couple that spanned race and gender. she loved him when they met at the upstairs lounge. they had a profound romance. regina was not her birth name. the name regina was decided upon for her by reginald adams. it was an upstairs lounge patient who died in the fire.

he was the lone black victim. they were looking for names for her and he said his name is reggie. he said, i think we should call you regina because that means queen. i like to think of you as my queen. so, she decided she would be regina forever. eventually she changed her legal name to regina adams. because his name had been reginald adams and he died in the fire and was the love of her life. now she could always be his queen. >> i just feel that with vice president pence, he has sent people and is so against homosexuals that he's unable to

be reeducated. what can be done about that situation? >> i do not know. what can be done politically? i don't know. part of the reason i wrote this book nobody cares about me. nobody cares what i wrote. i'm a first-time author. this history is compelling. also part of the reason people are interested is that we are 15 years away from the decriminalization of homosexuality of the supreme court. i think people are interested in a real truth and reconciliation moment with the closet. i think the more people look at the institution of the closet and really considered the way men and women had to live the more they would understand it's not a functional institution in our society. it doesn't serve citizenry or strengthen families. because the closet itself with the reeducation program.

what it does is it shouldn't be a controversial phrase, but it produces a mentally ill individual. if further metastasizes the problem. then you have a homosexual individual living in a complex tower of mere so often times can become homophobic. and they can become quite violent. >> they are even further in the closet. three glances in the mirror back. sometimes they cannot find their way back from that madness. the argument they make is that the closet is an institution and great corruption and violence.

i think that's an argument as a historian we need to make. i don't take on headlines or anything. there is a reason the upstairs lounge is a very compressed and contemporary topic. it has a lot to do with the political climate you're talking about. >> we have come a long way. there some people who we will never reach. >> i wrote this book to i don't want to preach to the choir, wrote this book for gay allies who are quiet, specifically men like my relatives that know me and love me. i was hoping they would do something like that. i would start to think about what would my ideology permit me to do to others if i took my

ideology away and looked at my behavior could a descendent the middle. i think there's a larger group of people, at least i'm hopeful and convinced that have a gay son, cousin, her brother. >> they were so glad a couple years ago they could get married. they are really fearful. it just breaks my heart. >> but it is important that lgbt plus youth and allies but they can learn the lessons from others and they fought very hard against other.

they believed in america who do not believe in them. they fought to be citizens. i think they need to take lessons from the prior generation. >> all we heard was other people say well they deserve what they get. i still remember that. so, your book is wonderful. >> thank you. >> everybody should read it. >> thank you. >> i'm glad you made it. >> i am supposed to get a book afterwards. they were gone earlier.

>> i'm glad you made it. thank you. >> i have a question about the metropolitan church. what is it doing now? >> it still exist in new orleans. it is run by a wonderful woman. i had coffee with pastor allie this morning. she was instrumental in participating in the 45th anniversary memorial for the upstairs lunch bar which took place at saint marks methodist church last sunday. she spoke at the memorial. i would not say she plan the whole thing. the pastor plan the memorial but she spoke and read a letter from the founding pastor from the community church who was a great

figure name troy perry. it was the day after the upstairs lounge fire, hours afterwards this radical gave minister in the early 1970s back then was one of the only homosexuals who gave his real name to the press and allowed his photograph in the newspaper. he heard about the fire and allies descended upon new orleans to raise awareness. part of the thread we wanted to enable it we wanted to have a consistent thread with troy. so pastor allie read all letter about his recollections of what it was like to come into new orleans and the tough time he had to bring gay liberation ideology to a closet community. it was a special thing. at the memorial it was a surprise speaker. i was in tears when it happened.

i remember reverend corey said please stand for us. new orleans mayor, latoya cantrell. she walked down the aisle of the church, stood at the podium and recognized the lounge as part of city history. it was incredible. an incredible moment. the pastor allie was in the front row when that happened. the threat of the metropolitan community churches strong and weaves throughout the history. they been kind of a wandering flock. they've had countless ministers and church buildings. it still is not very popular to call yourself a gay christian. probably better now than in the early 70s. but, it is still highly controversial even in the lgbt community.

that often times does not embrace queer spirituality. some are so burned by organized religion when they were younger. anyway, it still exist. >> i've not read your book yet, but i will. >> i'm wondering in your travels did you come across mike's name. >> i did. he is like a french quarter character. >> he was a religious man. the preacher and minister. at the center with the crowds but mike -- >> he's a man of many hats. he had a health clinic that he ran. >> we had a papier-mâché mask. >> he was like a french quarter character or d level celebrity where he was a well recognized.

>> he is a profoundly serious person and actually started out ministering to those who are sick. he was very much a part of that. >> he was tied in with bill. >> they started the fleamarket. >> will was a gay managing editor, and the courier in 1973 and bill was one of the few journalists in the city who consistently and doggedly reported the upstairs launch fire. he reported it as a homosexual tragedy. and then i'm sorry, i want introduce you, you worked. >> you edited bill rushton. >> oh my gosh.

you edited the editor? >> well, so glad you're here. could you stand and let people know your name. >> no. >> it was in all weekly publication that published out of a place off of decatur street. it was some of the most important research i was able to find about the fire was from those articles. so thank you so much for covering the. >> bill is definitely dedicated to that story and so profoundly change thereafter. his whole focus in life was switched from that time. much more active and politically active always politically asked to give.

he called himself the -- of the student strike. >> and he was involved in the protest in 1970s. it helped lead some of those. that was helpful in my storytelling to be able to draw a clear line to an individual who had been important to the upstairs lounge legacy and one who had been important to efforts to repel and need in her anti- homosexual message. >> he was a great writer. >> i'm thinking about tennessee williams and the exile. and how openly he lived. yet,'s plays were heterosexual for the most part. so, it was quite a time. >> he was out in the quarters

someone and then he was closeted in new york city his closest friends in the theater. a great biography on him was such a good title, but he worried a bout and got dings in reviews about the moral content of his place which sometimes looked at homosexual issues. they're engaged in the relationship. and also deals with a homosexual relationship. i think he was worried about the way his mad pilgrimage of the flesh. he did not want them to be affected by his own personal private behavior. he felt that he could be so savage in his reviews by people to take shots from him. they'd recognize those is the best place of year.

he walked a very careful line often times. for most people, he had a sense of who he was but often times he played off that behavior. any other questions? >> back in those days everybody knew and we felt like with the french quarter with heterosexual people like me they were friendly and open. nobody was closeted in their professional lives. but in the french quarter felt very open. it was much more open. >> you could find your people

there. you could go there. >> we felt like the french quarter was a safe place for people who are gay from all over the south. especially to the quarter there was a community and safety there. we had nowhere else to go. >> it was integrated with the power structures. >> the garden district uptown with a closeted friend in your the plus one. for example they had a closeted gay friend. and you look at the invitation to all married events. you would see married couples.

there is a bit conspicuous. that was the culture them. it was understood that individuals could make shift to live in the society. while you are not publicly outed with the other individuals were your reputations would be destroyed. >> any other questions? >> when the upstairs lounge burn, it left a void to be filled by another bar. how long did it take? or did everybody step back? >> it was never reoccupied by another bar. there are less signs. it was a story nobody wanted to talk about even if you walked past it. that says something in a storytelling culture. people would walk past these

windows and i think to tell the story. the owner of the lounge did receive some what of an insurance settlement. a few months later started a bar called the post office. that was located now where the corner pocket is now. some of the upstairs lounge crowded survivors of the fire would go there and drink there. they had visible burn marks, scandalously the primary suspect there too. when he came back to new orleans. he was a brazen individual. he would drink there sometimes side-by-side with some of the fire survivors. i don't know if you know the story, he was an internally conflicted man in the communist. he convinced a woman twice his age to marry him in may of 1974. then he confessed on is what a

night that he was homosexual but he was impotent. i don't know why that makes any sense. he convinces her to move into the back trailer of his home for months, stealing from her and writing bad checks. he's about to divorce her but then he dies by suicide. that's part of what's complicated. any of the investigations into this is that the system is not designed to try the accused postmortem. but he would go inside this far with his boyfriend before he broke that man's heart to marry this woman. here be drinking side-by-side that is that time. >> thank you so much. [applause]

[applause] >> this will be broadcast on c-span. for anybody watching maybe we'll still have some copies around. please get one tonight. we'll do some signing appear on the front. momentarily. >> thank you for coming out in the rain. i appreciate it. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversation]

>> here's a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. on august 18, will be live at the mississippi book festival in jackson with jon meacham, and others. from august 31 until september 2 it is the decatur book festival in atlanta. then will be live for the 18th here in a role at the national book festival in washington, d.c. with supreme court justice, sonia sotomayor, former secretary of state, madeleine albright and others. later in the month is the baltimore book festival. for more information about upcoming fairs and festivals and to watch our previous festival coverage, quick the book fairs tab on the website, booktv.org. >> book tv recently visited capitol hill task members of

congress what they're reading the summer. >> i just read this book called the simpl sympathizer. it's the perfect book to talk about for world refuge day. i'm now reading the second book called the refugees. they are remarkable. remarkable books who captured the complexity of a refugees left those are the two books that are front and center for me right now. >> book tv wants to know what you're reading. send us your reading list on instagram or facebook. this is television for serious readers.