The 2020 Lucy Somerville Howorth Lecture and Queer Studies Lecture will be presented by Robert W. Fieseler. Forty-three years before the Pulse nightclub shooting became the largest mass murder of gays in the United States, an arsonist set fire to the Up Stairs Lounge in New Orleans, killing 32 people. Author Robert W. Fieseler will lecture on the history revealed in his book Tinderbox, which recounts the tragic fire that happened on the night of June 24, 1973, with first person interviews and extensive research weaving a story of memorable people such as trans pioneer Regina Adams inhabiting in a closeted, but thriving, underground world. Fieseler’s story of this forgotten history also reports the political and societal change that followed the fire within a nascent "Gay Liberation" movement, which was not yet LGBTQ+.