Jewel Thais-Williams has Died
The beloved founder of Catch One Disco was 86.
For decades, Jewel Thais Williams radiated a quiet strength and moral commitment to being of service to those in need. She saved countless lives during the excruciating AIDS Crisis by giving Black LGBTQ+ people a place to be every inch of their authentic selves.
Jewel passed away on Monday, July 7, two months after her 86th birthday.
Jewel used Jewel’s Catch One Disco, her vast historic “underground” nightclub in LA’s mid-Wilshire District, as a community center where organizations such as AIDS Project Los Angeles, where she sat on the Board, and political candidates and organizations could hold fundraisers, elected officials could hold town halls and health experts could provide natural and medical updates.
She founded Rue’s House with her wife Rue Thais Williams to provide a safe haven for women with HIV/AIDS and their children.
A co-founder of the Minority AIDS Project with Rev. Carl Bean, Jewel was a longtime supporter of Jeffrey King and In The Meantime which is located at the AHF-owned Carl Bean House.
Among Jewel’s greatest honors was the 2019 dedication of Jewel Thais Williams Square at the corner of Pico Boulevard and Norton Avenue in Arlington Heights, the site of Jewel’s Catch One Disco.
Jewel had been quietly battling health issues for a long time. I am among several close friends who felt increasingly powerless in trying to help her. Over the years, we had to settle for irregular phone calls. And as we aged, we always ended with a note of gratitude and love, promising to catch up later – even when she called to say goodbye.
Unbeknownst to most in our communities, our friendship was deep, born out of personal 12 Step honesty, civil rights history and sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying debates over conspiracy theories and healthcare practices. We shared a lot in a look and a knowing laugh, often confusing onlookers who saw only a white LGBTQ+ reporter and a Black LGBTQ+ icon so comfortably human together.
I first met Jewel at the 1989 National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum in LA. I was newly out, freelancing for the gay press and clinging to my identity as a left-over hippie, former mainstream journalist, and most importantly, a 12-Stepper doing whatever I could to help my friends with HIV/AIDS. I tried to shadow Forum co-founder Phill Wilson, absorbing and secretly marveling at everything and everyone I met – including filmmaker Marlon Riggs and poet Essex Hemphill whose incredible documentary “Tongues Untied” had just been released.
I was hanging out in an almost packed conference room, feeling woefully conspicuous behind my pen and little notepad, when in walks this elegant lesbian couple dressed in bright, beautiful dashikis, the personification of quiet dignity. The crowd parted to allow them to pass, smiling, nodding, reaching out a hand in gratitude. I was riveted: Who ARE these people?
It was my journalist obligation to find out – and that’s what started a decades-long precious friendship. I regularly covered events at the Catch and whatever Jewel or Phill Wilson were doing. It’s difficult to explain to younger people what that Second Wave of AIDS was like. Many of us were attending or producing memorials for our friends two or three times a week. We lived in a constant state of trauma, triggering a perpetual depth of abandonment, loss and rejection.
That made love and friendship keenly intense. Ubiquitous Death pushed us to the forefront of a spiritual vanguard that didn’t judge, told the truth about dying, and forged a new kind of automatic “in the trenches” association whenever someone talked about AIDS. My friend Michael Callen used to say that the “gay community” was a “useful fiction.” Fine. We needed community, no matter how we got there.
But for Jewel and me, “community” was very real. It was my job to try to compartmentalize my personal feelings and report on as much of the vast intersectional spectrum of our people as possible. It was Jewel’s job to be “momma” for Black LGBTQ+ people – a mission placed upon her, which she accepted as “a dedicated elder doing what I can to make our village a better place for us all.”
The recognition, the honors, the awards meant a lot to Jewel – as did the off-stage moments with selfies, a shared thought, a laugh serving as a communal hug of love.
As a humble May 9 birthday gift, I posted some shared memories and photos on Facebook – such as Jewel and Rue – who let me stay with them at the Washington Hilton during Bill Clinton’s 1992 Inauguration -- emerging in their white and black mink coats and me PRAYING that PETA didn’t see them! Then there was the AIDS Action Council party and the visit to the African American Museum at the Smithsonian, and listening to Maya Angelou deliver her “Good Morning” poem at the Inauguration. The experience was best captured in a fun photo of Jewel and Rue at the “Gay Corner” waiting for the Clinton procession. It was my first cover story of Jewel for the Lesbian News.
But one of our most significant times together was our trip to the White House for Pride when Jewel got to meet Barack Obama, America’s first Black President. She could hardly sleep the night before. But Obama had some emergency and rushed through the rope line. VP Joe Biden, on the other hand, stopped and fixed his gaze on Jewel as if she was the only person in the East Room. Jewel also was thrilled to meet her personal hero, Rep. John Lewis.
“Some 60-plus years ago when I was a teenager, I wished I could march and be part of the civil rights movement,” Jewel told me for a Los Angeles Blade story. She shared how she vicariously experienced the pain of all those young people who were hosed, beaten, and jailed, including Lewis. “So, when I met him, there was a special kindred spirit of feeling like I knew him always. When they were beaten, I felt that.”
John Lewis, Jewel told me, “is one of my heroes. It was a thrill meeting one of the legendary survivors of the ‘Bloody Sunday’ march that made it possible for Barack Obama to be in the White House.”
So here we found ourselves as dear quiet friends, as freedom fighters for our people and others, with so much shared, there was almost nothing left to say.
Except I never told Jewel she was my hero. Though as she closed her eyes the final time, as she felt my spiritual kiss on her cheek goodbye, as she prepared to meet all those friends and family who went before, I suspect she knows that the lighthouse light she lit for me will never dim until it is time for our friendship to be rekindled.
Until that time, rest in peace and thank you, Jewel Thais Williams.
Here’s a tribute to Jewel from the wonderful Earnest Winbourne: