New orleans gay bar shooting

Author Robert Fieseler sets the largely overlooked tragedy of the arson that killed 32 people in its rightful historical place. The mass murder dragged a closeted, blue-collar gay community into the national public eye—and then the story all but disappeared. Until now. Fieseler spoke with Eric Marcus about how he discovered the story and the surprising and disturbing avenues down which his research led him.

Marcus is the creator and host of the award-winning Making Gay History podcast and author of a book by the same title. Click here to find out how to subscribe and listen to the Library Talks podcast. I'm Aiden Flax-Clark. So, some of you may have missed the announcement last week that we changed the name of this podcast and you might've been a little confused when I just said you're listening to Library Talks.

But don't be confused. It's a way better name, right? We also changed the logo. And much more importantly, the day that the show comes out. It's gone from Tuesday to Sunday. But same great content. Same great guests from the New York Public Library, just a different look and feel. But it's one that's been buried for decades.

New Orleans searches for remains of 4 victims of 1973 gay bar fire that killed 31

It's of an arson that happened in in New Orleans at a gay bar called "The Upstairs Lounge," in which 31 men and 1 woman were killed. It was the single biggest mass murder of gay people until the shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Why it was buried, how it was buried, and what happened was the subject of Robert's conversation.

Which he had with Eric Marcus. Eric Marcus is the host of the Making Gay History Podcast, and an author of the book by the same name. Both of them rely on an incredible and extensive archive of oral histories that Eric recorded for years with figures from all over the gay rights movement, both before Stonewall and after.

Eric actually donated that archive to the library, and we're really proud to house it. Eric's podcast is fantastic. He's a really wonderful, seasoned interviewer and all of his skills are in evidence here in this conversation with Robert Fieseler. When did you first learn about the New Orleans fire?

Because I hadn't heard of it until it started being written about in relation to the Pulse Massacre. I was a student at the Columbia Journalism School, and I had written a sample chapter for another book about; essentially it was about the burning of a Catholic Church in my hometown by the KKK.