Jewel Thais-Williams

LOS ANGELES, CA — In 1973, the country was in the midst of the Cold War. Richard Nixon told the world he wasn’t a crook. The first American prisoners of war were released from Vietnam. A dozen eggs cost forty-five cents, Roe v. Wade made abortion a constitutional right, and Patrick Kearney preyed on gay men.

And in 1973, Jewel Thais-Williams opened the doors of Jewel’s Catch One, one of the first black discos in the United States, and initially meant to be a supper club. “For the first couple years, I had live entertainment—Esther Phillips, Etta James,” says Thais-Williams. “Then I had Sunday night talent shows with twenty to twenty-five people, just outstanding singing people. They could sing their faces off, just one right after another, after another, after another.”

Jewel’s Catch One evolved into a staple of LA’s dance scene. Legendary performers like Madonna and Rick James graced the stage, while revelers hustled and bumped the night away. More than a nightclub, Jewel’s Catch One was a safe haven. It welcomed the misfits, the outcasts, the huddled masses of black sheep—those turned away by everyone else. The club remained open for an astounding forty-two years, closing its doors in 2015.

To understand the success of America’s first black disco, you first have to get to know Jewel Thais-Williams, who grew up knowing the feeling of not belonging.

She was born in 1939, only 74 years after the abolishment of slavery and 25 before the dissolution of segregation. Her parents, Ruth and Willie, were just one generation removed from the end of the Civil War. Born in Arkansas, they migrated from city to city.

“I was born in Gary, and I had four siblings that were older,” Thais-Williams says. And while Gary offered educational opportunities, it wasn’t quite the promised land her parents had envisioned. “… the real promised land was in California. Palm trees. Sun. No temperatures in the zeroes.”

Ruth and Willie moved their family to the warmth of San Diego, but all was not sunshine and good times. Though she was close to her father, Thais-Williams’ relationship with her mother was marked by years struggling to earn her approval.

“My mother would really bear down on me all the time,” she says, “and one day I got the courage to tell her, ‘One of these days I’m gonna have so much money, and I’m gonna get a big house and put you over there with a nurse. But I’m gonna be the one that’s gonna have to take care of you. So just remember that when you’re telling me I’m never gonna be nothing.’” While trying to amount to something, Thais-Williams also grappled with feelings she didn’t understand, or maybe didn’t want to understand.

She wasn’t fully aware of being gay until she turned twenty-five. “Sometimes women would flirt with me,” she says, “and I’d say, ‘What are they looking at?’ I didn’t figure it out because it wasn’t discussed. No kind of sex. Even heterosexual sex wasn’t discussed.”

“But my intro to it came really, really hard with my first lover. It was tough. I was working at Safeway,and Marianne—she was tall, thin, fair skin—reminded me of my mom. But there wasn’t any kind of sexual attraction for her at all,” she relates.

After a year of working together, Marianne invited Thais-Williams to her home to cook steaks for dinner. Thais-Williams had no idea what was going on initially, although Marianne thought she was a lesbian, and “in the know.” Soon, she was.

Coming out in the sixties wasn’t just difficult—it was damn near impossible. “It wasn’t like I slept with Marianne and got to call home and was, like, ‘Hey, this is Jewel. Guess what. I like women. I like them a lot.’ It wasn’t like that. It was years of hiding and being in the closet. Lots of years. In fact, it wasn’t until I was fifty that I had an open conversation with my parents.”

Thais-Williams and Marianne stayed together eleven years. By the end of the relationship, the similarities between Marianne and Thais-Williams’ mother became much clearer. Marianne could give a master class in manipulation. “There was some fear and trepidation. She could change faces. She could cry. If there was something she wanted, I don’t care what it was, then she went for it. And she got it no matter what she had to do for it.”

Years after she left Marianne, Rue came into Thais-Williams’ life. “It takes a lot of work to be in a relationship. Over the years, Rue and I have gotten it together. It was not easy, but I was determined, if we were gonna be together, to not fall back into being that little girl with my mom again. No, I’m gonna live my life.” After twenty-eight years together, Jewel and Rue still find ways to make their relationship work.

Thais-Williams attended UCLA and graduated with a BA in History; but she determined that the only way to get that money she had once promised her mother was to work for herself. Now it was the early 70s, and most West Hollywood nightclubs discriminated against minorities, and the LGBTQ community was generally not welcome in black clubs. Thais-Williams decided to create a space where everyone felt welcome.

Jewel’s Catch One was always more than a nightclub, and she was always more than an entrepreneur. In 1998, she went back to school, earning a Master’s degree in Oriental Medicine. In 2015, when retired from the nightclub business, she turned her focus to the Village Health Foundation, a nonprofit she had formed fourteen years earlier, offering health treatment and education to minorities and low-income individuals in the Los Angeles community. The Foundation is inclusive, just like Jewel’s Catch One.

Thais-Williams stands as a beacon of hope for a community often forgotten by the rest of the world. At Jewel’s Catch One, you didn’t just dance. At the Village Health, you don’t just receive medical treatment. You found a friend, a soulmate and a home.

— Written by Keldine Hull
— Photography by Milana Burdette
— First published in [ Issue 1 ]