Jewel Thais-Williams, the founder of Jewel’s Catch One, Los Angeles’ first Black-owned LGBTQIA+ nightclub, has died aged 86.
In a statement posted yesterday (9th July) to Instagram, the team at Catch One wrote they were 'honoring the life' of Thais-Williams "with heavy hearts". No cause of death has been disclosed at the time of writing.
"A visionary, activist, healer, and mother to many, her legacy transcends nightlife, reverberating through community health, advocacy, and the fight for acceptance and safety," read the statement.
"She welcomed everyone under her roof and transformed our city. Today we honor her spirit and aim to carry forward her message of love, resilience, and unity at Catch One", it continued.
Born in Indiana in 1939, before moving to San Diego as a child, Thais-Williams opened Jewel's Catch One — also known as "The Catch" — in the Arlington Heights neighbourhood of LA in 1973.
The venue became the city's first Black-owned queer club, which was visited over the years by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Madonna and Whitney Houston, the Los Angeles Times reports. The club was later bought out in 2015, during which it changed its name from Jewel's Catch One to Catch One.
Thais-Williams also worked as a community activist, co-founding the Minority AIDS Project and serving on the board of the AIDS Project Los Angeles.
In 2018, a documentary exploring the life of Thais-Williams and "The Catch", Jewel's Catch One, was released.
“It was a community, it was family,” Thais-Williams told The Los Angeles Times back in 2018. “To be honest myself, I was pretty much a loner too. I always had the fears of coming out, or my family finding out. I found myself there.”