“Everybody’s so outraged about it now,” Mitchell said. WATCH: The ABC News original documentary 'Prejudice & Pride: Fire at the UpStairs Lounge,' now streaming on /features and the ABC News app. Fieseler’s recently published book Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the UpStairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation as our guide, we contacted survivors, family members, first responders, activists and journalists and discovered stories of unimaginable pain. It was the largest mass murder of LGBTQ citizens in United States history until the Pulse nightclub massacre in 2016, but we had never heard of it. The fire effectively outed what was previously a deeply closeted Deep South gay community and exposed, in the city’s response to the tragedy, pervasive prejudices in the famously live-and-let-live Big Easy. In 1973, an arsonist set fire to a popular gay bar in New Orleans’ French Quarter called the UpStairs Lounge, killing 32 people and injuring many more. This story seemed to fit a familiar mold. We cover attacks, shootings and disasters crime, corruption and coverups everything from foreign threats to our democracy to the scam artist who wants to separate you from your paycheck. When you work in an investigative unit, the stories you tell rarely have a happy ending.
