On the corner where Iberville meets Chartres in New Orleans’s French Quarter, there was a bronze plaque embedded in the sidewalk. This plaque listed the thirty-two individuals who died in the 1973 Upstairs Lounge gay bar fire, their names encircling an upside-down triangle set between two fleurs-de-lis. The following inscription sat in its center:
“At this site, on June 24, 1973 in the Upstairs Lounge, these thirty-two people lost their lives in the worst fire in New Orleans. The impact went far beyond the loss of individual lives, giving birth to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender rights movement in New Orleans.”
Dedicated on June 22, 2003, almost thirty years after the fire, Reverend Dexter Brecht intended for this plaque to function as a “living memorial,” aiding queer New Orleanians in transmuting “what had once been a historic abyss, a source of unspeakable pain, into a story others could remember.” He understood the fire and its aftermath to have been a “birthing process” in which New Orleans’s queer community, and Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) specifically, “became a people.” Historian Robert Fieseler affirms Brecht’s sentiment, concurring that the memorial plaque facilitated healing for “the MCC, for families of the Up Stairs Lounge victims denied dignity and restitution” and carries little to no negative connotation.
Reverend Brecht felt there was a need to memorialize the fire victims because unprocessed grief lingered in several of his parishioners. He further believed the press, city, and nation trivialized the fire due to its victims’ homosexuality, an injustice requiring rectification. Though Brecht himself was raised in Iowa and knew nothing of the fire before being appointed to New Orleans MCC, he felt its memory demanded a physical monument, so both his congregation and all of New Orleans could publicly honor those who died.
Fieseler begins his account of the Up Stairs Lounge fire with a series of questions, the first two of which characterize his discussion of the plaque: “What does it mean to remember? What does a memory give one license to do?” Brecht understands the recollection of a buried memory as license to right a perceived societal wrong and a plaque in the sidewalk featuring victims’ names to function as a proper means of memorialization. However, this act of anamnesis did not bring the fire’s arsonist to justice, nor did the plaque please all who survived the fire. Some felt the memory was too painful and desired no part in its installation and accompanying ceremony. Furthermore, not all who perished were out to family members, friends, or employers, challenging the agency they had maintained in life. To Fieseler’s initial inquiries I would add a question of my own: How does one recall a memory responsibly?
These questions are particularly timely given the recent theft of the Upstairs Lounge plaque in April 2024. Pried from the sidewalk overnight, the plaque’s absence spurred a flurry of responses from New Orleans LGBTQ+ advocates the following morning. Louisiana LGBTQ+ Archives director Frank Perez and representatives of New Orleans MCC quickly began a fundraiser to install a new plaque, intended to be dedicated in June 2025. At the time of this paper description’s writing, Perez’s goal has already been exceeded by over two thousand dollars. The new plaque’s design proposal again features each of the fire victim’s names, including the name of a man whose remains were recently identified.
In this paper, I theorize a conception of responsible memory, utilizing the 1973 Up Stairs Lounge gay bar fire, its 2003 memorialization, and planned 2025 rededication as case studies. The memory of marginalized groups is frequently fragile, subject to oppressive social and legislative forces, and often necessarily leaves little trace; this is particularly true of queer memory. I argue that in retrieving and reviving lost queer memories, historians must consider queer subjects’ opacity, lest archival violence participate in the contemporary suppression of queer voices. Bringing archival theory to bear on memory studies and drawing upon scholars like Charles Long and Edouard Glissant, I assert that those reclaiming the past must responsibly assess if there are names one should not recall, stories one should not tell. Perhaps some names, some stories, should be forgotten.
In this paper, I develop a conception of queer forgetting, utilizing the 1973 Up Stairs Lounge gay bar fire, its 2003 memorialization, and planned 2025 rededication as case studies. The memory of marginalized groups is frequently fragile, subject to oppressive social and legislative forces, and often necessarily leaves little trace; this is particularly true of queer memory. I argue that in retrieving and reviving lost queer memories, historians must consider queer subjects’ opacity, lest archival violence perpetuate the suppression of contemporary queer voices. Bringing archival theory to bear on memory studies and drawing upon scholars like Charles Long, Edouard Glissant, I assert that those reclaiming the past must responsibly assess if there are names one should not recall, stories one should not tell. Perhaps some names, some stories, should be forgotten.