How L.A.'s queen of Black queer disco used her powers for good

Los Angeles Times

4 days ago

When Rep. Maxine Waters learned Jewel Thais-Williams had died at 86 on Monday, the politician — who typically has something to say — fell silent for a moment or two. Thais-Williams is widely known in the Black and LGBTQ+ communities as the founder of the iconic nightclub Jewel's Catch One. It opened in 1973, and at its peak, celebrities from Grace Jones and the Pointer Sisters to Sharon Stone and Madonna walked through its doors.
However, it wasn't flashbacks of the nightlife scene at the corner of Pico and Norton that caused Waters to pause. The congresswoman was reflecting on the impact Thais-Williams had on the country.
'Jewel was a warrior, a true warrior,' Waters told me. 'A lot of people talk about helping people. She just did it — over and over again — no matter the circumstances. She didn't wait for someone else to step up. She didn't ask for permission. She just went out and helped people … so many people. She was a wonder woman.'
To truly understand Thais-Williams' legacy, you must first remember the time in which she began building it.
In 1961, a Supreme Court ruling restricted women from tending bar unless they were the wife or a daughter of the owner. And while the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created a legal pathway to help dismantle sex discrimination, when Thais-Williams opened her bar less than a decade later, the residue from that Supreme Court ruling — and Jim Crow laws — was still quite palpable.
On top of all of that, she was a lesbian. In 1973 California, employment law did not protect the queer community, Penal Code 647 was used to justify entrapment stings in public spaces, and the white gays of West Hollywood would often ask Black and brown patrons for three pieces of ID just to keep them out of clubs.
Establishing Jewel's Catch One, becoming the first Black lesbian to own a bar in this country, was no crystal stair for Thais-Williams.
'When I first met Jewel, it was in the backyard of Catch One,' said Waters, who spearheaded the federal Minority AIDS Initiative and convinced the Congressional Black Caucus to host a hearing on the disease, which had been disproportionately killing minorities. 'I was trying to get federal funding to help people living with AIDS and went to see what she was doing. It was incredible. She was absolutely incredible. She was helping all of these men whose families had kicked them out and had nowhere else to go. She was feeding them out of her restaurant and helping them with treatment. And then she went to school to learn medicine and helped even more people. She was truly special.'
Keith Boykin, founder of the National Black Justice Coalition and former aide to President Clinton, was a friend of Thais-Williams and told me 'the most important lesson I learned from Jewel is that building community in a time of oppression is an act of resistance.'
In 1993, Boykin helped arrange the first sit-down meeting between a president and the LGBTQ+ community, a startling fact when you consider that by then there were nearly 400,000 reported cases of AIDS and nearly a quarter of a million Americans — predominantly gay men — had already died. The federal government's deafening silence through the '80s and early '90s had been met with loud resistance from organizations such as ACT UP, and, as Boykin said, community building.
The work Waters and Thais-Williams did together is one of the highlights of the 2016 documentary 'Jewel's Catch One.' Its director, C. Fitz, told me she 'set out to make the film due to the fact I saw a large need to tell her story for our future.'
'I was compelled to make the film to shine a light on an important hidden hero in our community that changed lives and impacted history,' Fitz said. 'I wanted to tell the story certainly about her incredible club she created, but also her life as a whole and all she accomplished including being a healer with her clinic.'
In 2001, Thais-Williams opened the Village Health Foundation, which offered traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, counseling and other holistic approaches to treating ailments that were disproportionately impacting the Black community.
It took Fitz six years to make the film. As a result, she said, she carries numerous life lessons she learned from Thais-Williams with her each day, like 'the importance of laughter.'
'As hard as a day was, I always saw Jewel laughing,' Fitz said. 'We work so hard to make a difference, but we have to take care of ourselves inside and out too.'
This week began with about 100 armed federal agents and members of the state's National Guard conducting a 'show of force' operation in a relatively empty MacArthur Park. Thankfully, there weren't any mass arrests, just mass concern about the president's tendency to use our military for political theater. Last month, when Waters tried to check on David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California who was being detained at a federal facility, the door was shut in her face.
There's an obvious thread between the government cruelty of past decades — toward LBGTQ+ people, women and people of color — and the performative cruelty today against … well, all of those same groups still, and also in recent months especially against Latinos and immigrants.
Waters had been in meetings most of the day when news about Thais-Williams reached her ears … and broke her heart.
'She was a fighter; that's what I love most about her,' Waters said. 'I'm a fighter too. That's one of the reasons why we got along so well.'
With all due respect, I would argue 'fighting' isn't the reason the two of them got along so well. Everybody is fighting, in one way or another. It's what we fight for that keeps people together.
It's what we fight for that ultimately defines the meaning of our lives. Thais-Williams may be known for opening a popular nightclub, but what she fought for — the people most in need of a champion — is what defined her life.
YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow