NEW ORLEANS — Memorials continue to grow for victims in this weekend’s deadly shooting at Club Q, a popular LGBTQ bar, in Colorado Springs.
“I lost two friends who worked at Q,” Mary Schuler said. “That is horrible. All of my friends are grieving.”
Five people died. At least 25 were injured.
“It’s hate. It’s purely hate,” Tommy Stubblefield said.
For Stubblefield the attack hits home in New Orleans, where one of the deadliest and first known attacks on a gay bar happened.
“There are so many people that don’t even know about it,” Stubblefield said.
People walk by it daily in the French Quarter. Near the corner of Charters and Iberville, where the UpStairs Lounge use to be, there’s a marker. It honors the 32 people who were killed and the more than a dozen injured during an arson in June of 1973.
“Looking up there, all you can do is visualize what these people must have been feeling. There were bars on the windows upstairs so they couldn’t jump out the windows.”
That’s why Stubblefield, along with the group he co-founded, Crescent City Leathermen, lead a yearly vigil remembering those 31 men and 1 woman. It remained the deadliest attack on a gay bar in the country until the 2016 shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando left 49 people dead.
“It just disgusts me that people can walk into an establishment and decide they’re going to take somebody’s life,” Stubblefield said.
It’s been almost five decades since the attack in New Orleans. There’ve been multiple attacks inside gay and lesbian bars across the country since then. Stubblefield worries they won’t stop.
“You just never know who’s going to walk in there that’s going to be disgruntled about something,” Stubblefield said.
Over the weekend, LGBTQ bars in New Orleans were on alert after what happened in Colorado. Stubblefield says remembering what happened at UpStairs Lounge is a reminder that attacks can happen anywhere.
“I’m surprised it’s not happened in New Orleans, again,” Stubblefield said.
The primary suspect in the UpStairs Lounge arson was never charged and killed himself the following year. Plans are already underway to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the UpStairs Lounge fire next Summer.
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