Call Me Larry
A Creole Man’s Triumph over Racism and Homophobia
by Larry Bagneris
Growing up gay in 1950s New Orleans wasn’t easy, but Larry Bagneris took his setbacks and turned them into passion and purpose.
Raised in a large, loving Creole family, Larry Bagneris Jr. knew from a young age that he liked boys. But New Orleans in the 1950s and early 1960s wasn’t an easy place to be out. In high school, he channeled his energies into the Civil Rights Movement. By college, he was exploring the gay bars of the French Quarter—and telling new acquaintances to ask for Larry, not Lawrence, when they phoned him at home. It wasn’t until his 1969 move to Houston that the many facets of his Creole identity coalesced into a powerful political force for gay rights.
In this bracing, uplifting, and sometimes laugh-out-loud memoir, Bagneris recalls his activist career: as founder of Houston’s Pride Parade and then, following a return to his hometown, as political organizer and mainstay of the local gay community. He invites us to join him on his travels, as well—from San Francisco to New York, Tel Aviv to Bangkok—as he builds community and finds family in queer spaces around the world.
Call Me Larry: A Creole Man’s Triumph over Racism and Homophobia
hardcover • 6" × 9" • 352 pp.
86 b&w images
ISBN 9780917860935
$24.95
About the Authors
A native New Orleanian, Larry Bagneris began his civil rights activism as a student at St. Augustine High School. He graduated from Xavier University of Louisiana and moved to Houston, Texas, where he was a two-term president of the city’s Gay Political Caucus, chairperson of Gay Pride week, and, in 1979, founder of Houston’s Gay Pride parade. Bagneris returned to New Orleans in the 1990s and became a lobbyist for the NO/AIDS Task Force. He served four mayoral administrations as executive director of New Orleans’s Human Relations Commission before retiring in 2018.
Ryan Gomezwas born to a Filipino family in Washington, DC, and graduated from Cornell University. At age twenty-five, he moved to New Orleans, where he participated in the redistricting cycle of 2020, helping create balanced city council and school board districts and a second Black congressional district in Louisiana. He works as a GIS specialist and demographer at the New Orleans District Attorney’s office.
Cover portrait by Jerry Click from the Houston Chronicle, © 1980 Hearst Newspapers, all rights reserved, used under license
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