Jewel Thais-Williams, the former owner of influential Los Angeles Black queer nightclub Jewel’s Catch One, has died.

According to The Advocate, social media tributes this week indicated that Thais-Williams died on Monday, July 7. Thais-Williams’ sister, Carol Williams, confirmed her passing to the L.A. Times, but did not specify a cause of death. She was 86 years old.

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Local L.A. outlets described Thais-Williams as a “matriarch” and a “trailblazing figure” to the city’s Black LGBTQ+ community. The L.A. Times called her nightclub, which Thais-Williams opened in 1973, as “a kind of West Coat Studio 54” that was both a “sanctuary for Black queer women” who were often marginalized in the broader gay club scene, and a place of singular importance to the city’s Black and queer nightlife culture. Jewel’s Catch One hosted performances by Donna Summer, Chaka Khan, Sylvester, and Rick James, as well as celebrity appearances by Ella Fitzgerald, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Sharon Stone, and Whoopi Goldberg.

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But Jewel’s Catch One was more than a hot spot. “I got the first sense of the business being more than just a bar and having an obligation to the community years ago when Black gays were carded — requiring several pieces of ID — to get into white clubs,” Thais-Williams said in a 1992 interview, according to the L.A. Times. “The idea is to have the freedom to go where you want to without being harassed. The predominantly male, white gay community has its set of prejudices. It’s better now, but it still exists.”

Nigl “14K,” who worked as the club’s manager, doorperson, and limo driver from the late 1980s until its sale in 2015, said that Thais-Williams created a place where people who felt unwelcome in West Hollywood clubs could go. “She was a great friend and a shrewd businessperson who allowed people to just be themselves.”

At the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s, Thais-Williams became “a surrogate mother for anyone with HIV who had been ostracized from their families,” her sister told the Times. She was also a tireless activist, co-founding both the Minority AIDS Project and, with her wife Rue, Rue’s House, a housing facility for women living with HIV, which later transitioned to becoming a sober-living home. Thais-Williams also served on the board of AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) and in 2001 founded the Village Health Foundation.

In a tribute posted to Instagram earlier this week, APLA wrote that Thais-Williams’s “vision, resilience, and compassion continue to shape our work and inspire generations of changemakers.”

As the Times notes, Thais-Williams sold Jewel’s Catch One to current owner Mitch Edelson in 2015. The venue, now known as Catch One, posted its own tribute to its founder this week. “A visionary, activist, healer, and mother to many, her legacy transcends nightlife, reverberating through community health, advocacy, and the fight for acceptance and safety,” the post reads. “She welcomed everyone under her roof and transformed our city.”

In the years after selling the club, Thais-Williams remained a venerated figure. She served as the Grand Marshal of the 2016 L.A. Pride Parade. In 2018, The Advocate named her the Legacy Honoree for its “Champions of Pride.” That same year, she was the subject of a Netflix documentary, Jewel’s Catch One, directed by C. Fitz and produced by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY. In 2019, the intersection where Catch One is located was renamed Jewel Thais-Williams Square by the L.A. City Council. And in 2021, she was among the 26 Black LGBTQ+ trailblazers listed in a U.S. House resolution introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) to honor “the contributions of Black LGBTQ+ individuals, both past and present, as fearless trailblazers in American culture and society.”

Thais-Williams is survived by her wife, Rue.

Edelson told the Times that Catch One is planning a memorial for its founder, and In The Meantime Men’s Group, Inc., founder Jeffrey King wrote in a Facebook post that “close friends and community leaders are in the planning process of a community-wide commemoration” of her life.

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