Poking a Tinderbox: the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and Stonewall 50

The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion this summer is causing a half-century look-back at the LGBT+ rights movement in America. Beneath the “triumphalist narrative” – that of the long but inevitable march to freedom – is a lost history of atrocities like the Up Stairs Lounge fire in 1973 New Orleans, which claimed 32 lives and then was forgotten. Robert W. Fieseler, author of the acclaimed book Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation, will speak on the historic tragedy – the deadliest fire in New Orleans history – and the purpose of combating a glossy vision of our queer past.