When the Courtroom Cheered: A Mid-Century Miscarriage of Justice
November 2023New Orleans’ acceptance of the LGBT+ community has radically changed since 1958, as illustrated by the tragic murder of Fernando Rios.
– by Frank Perez
New Orleans is consistently ranked as one of the top ten friendliest cities in the nation for LGBT+ people. Every June, a Pride flag flies at City Hall and rainbow banners flutter over North Rampart Street. Mayoral proclamations are issued for Southern Decadence each Labor Day weekend. The city also enjoys a group called the New Orleans LGBT Hospitality Alliance and there is even a queer Chamber of Commerce. New Orleans is very queer-friendly.
This column is made possible by the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana
Photo from the 2023 Pride parade, by Ellis Anderson
But it wasn’t always so. In 1955, Police Superintendent Provosty A. Dayries publicly proclaimed that homosexuals were the city’s “Number One vice problem,” adding, “They are the ones we want to get rid of most.” (1)
Widespread ignorance and familiar stereotypes of gay people were prevalent, especially the notion that homosexuals were predatory and looking to recruit teenagers and children. In 1951, the Times-Picayune ran a story entitled, “Curb Advocated on Homosexuals: Crackdown to Save Young Persons Demanded”:
A warning that homosexuals in the French Quarter are at work corrupting high school boys and girls was made Friday by Richard R. Foster, chairman of the Mayor’s Committee on the Vieux Carré, in an address before the Civic Council of New Orleans.
For that reason, he said, the homosexual problem is one of the city’s most serious. “In several instances, parents have come to police begging them to save their children,” he asserted.
“High school boys and girls enticed into places habituated by homosexuals often see an obscene show or something of that nature as a starter,” he added.
The homosexuals are, he said, “continuously recruiting” and there are at least four “places” in the Quarter which cater to almost no one but homosexuals.
“It almost seems as if youngsters who develop homosexual tendencies in other Southern cities are put on a train and sent to New Orleans,” he said. (2)
About a month earlier, the Times-Picayune ran another article along the same lines with a related twist. At a meeting of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee, Chairman Foster argued that the city should develop a strategy for discouraging “perverts” from coming to New Orleans, claiming most homosexuals in New Orleans were “out-of-towners.”
That some of the city’s gay residents were actually New Orleans natives was either incomprehensible or too distasteful to bear. The level of denial revealed in the article illustrates the level of bigotry and hatred permeating straight society at the time.
In the 1950s, tourism was coming into its own as an industry in New Orleans and the fear among political and business leaders was that queer visibility would scare away tourist dollars. Being gay was bad for business. This concern led Mayor Chep Morrison to create a “Committee on the Problem of Sex Deviates.” This committee formally suggested the city adopt “a climate of hostility” toward gays and lesbians.
The committee quickly turned a cold and critical eye toward the French Quarter’s gay and lesbian bars, or “queershops” as they were called. The committee was successful in shutting down the Starlet Lounge, and Tony Bacino’s bar at the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse streets was raided six times in 1958. (3)
An example of propasals in the 1950s to supress the “homosexual problem” in New Orleans. Arrests in bar raids were often accompanied by a beating and pressure to name other “perverts.” Anyone unfortunate enough to be arrested for “crimes against nature” or “committing a lewd act” had their name and picture published in the local newspapers. Often, arrests resulted in family alienation, loss of a job, eviction, and, in some cases, commitment to a mental asylum. The committee effectively established “a climate of hostility.”
Not surprisingly, public violence toward the gay community ensued.
The Murder of Fernando Rios
Photo of Fernando Rios from cover of Clayton Delery’s book Out for Queer Blood, used with permission of the author
In September of 1958, three Tulane students (John S. Farrell, Alberto A. Calvo, and David P. Drennan) decided to go carousing in the French Quarter. At the beginning of their outing, Farrell suggested they “roll a queer”—a phrase that meant mugging a gay man. Calvo and Drennan initially dismissed the idea, but hours later, after a night of drinking, the two did not object when Farrell brought up the idea again. (4)
Farrell entered Café Lafitte in Exile sometime after 1:30 a.m., while Calvo and Drennan waited outside. In the bar, Farrell met 26-year-old Fernando Rios. Rios was a Mexican travel guide leading a tour group of doctors and their wives visiting New Orleans. The Rios and Farrell decided to “hook-up” and left the bar together.
Farrell and Rios entered Pere Antoine Alley, adjacent to St. Louis Cathedral, where Farrell began physically assaulting Rios. Calvo and Drennan, who were following behind, joined the attack. Rios, after being struck in the head several times and kicked repeatedly in the abdomen, died at Charity Hospital of a fractured skull about twelve hours after being discovered in the alley around 6:15 a.m.
Newspapers around the region covered the murder and trial. This is from the Montgomery Advertiser’s October 1, 1958 issue
During a routine autopsy, the city coroner discovered the victim had an unusually thin cranium. Farrell, Calvo, and Drennan were arrested and charged with murder. At trial, the defendants admitted to the beating but argued Rios died because of his feminine “eggshell cranium,” not because of their attack. Tortured logic aside, this defense made perfect sense to a homophobic, all-male, all-white jury in mid-twentieth century New Orleans and the three students were easily acquitted after deliberating a mere two hours and fifteen minutes.
When the “not guilty” verdict was announced, the courtroom erupted in applause and cheers for the jury. The New Orleans States-Item featured on its front page a picture of the defendants smiling broadly next to a boxed joke entitled “Today’s Chuckle” which read, “Overheard in a nightclub: ordinarily I never chase a man, but this one was getting away.”
The District Attorney’s office filed robbery charges against the three students, but that charge was reduced to theft and the judge sentenced Farrell and Drennan to six months (Calvo had returned to his native Panama). The judge (George Platt) then immediately suspended the sentence.
Throughout the ordeal, a deluge of letters poured into the editorial offices of the city’s newspapers, the overwhelming majority of them supporting the gay-bashing murderers and calling on the city to “clean up the Quarter.” The few letters in support of gays were often backhanded. One incensed reader argued that police should leave the gay bars alone so the “perverts” wouldn’t feel compelled to mingle with “normal” people at straight bars.
Rios wasn’t the only victim of homophobic violence, but his murder and the sensational trial that followed reveal a glimpse into New Orleans’ very homophobic past. Fortunately, the city no longer fosters a climate of hostility toward queer people. How that paradigm shift in attitudes took place will be the topic of my next Rainbow History column.
To learn more about the Rios murder and the climate of hostility in which he was killed, read Clayton Delery’s Out for Queer Blood: The Murder of Fernando Rios and the Failure of New Orleans Justice. Exposit, 2017.
1. Perez, Frank, and Jeffrey Palmquist. In Exile: The History and Lore Surrounding New Orleans Gay Culture and Its Oldest Gay Bar. LL Publications, 2012.
2. “Curb Advocated on Homosexuals: Crackdown to Save Young Persons Demanded.” Times-Picayune. March 8, 1951.
3. Perez, Frank. “The Persecution of Tony Bacino’s Bar.” Ambush. April 16, 2013.
4. Delery, Clayton. Out for Queer Blood: The Murder of Fernando Rios and the Failure of New Orleans Justice. Exposit, 2017.
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