Get Used to It: Ep. 48, "Voices of Our Lives: Jewel Thais-Williams"

oh [Applause] [Music] hi welcome to get used to it i'm sheila kuhl your host and today we have another in an occasional series that we're calling voices of our lives where we talk to men and women who've been stellar in our gay and lesbian community just to see sort of how they got where they are and what they think about everything and i'm very pleased today to have as our guest jule tys williams who is the owner of jewels catch one disco and has been for 25 years here in los angeles welcome jewel thank you sheila thanks for inviting me to your show well i should have said in addition to being jewels catch one disco it's jewels catch one community services center and just about everything else at least in in the hood as you said to me right around the corner actually from where i grew up but i'd love to know kind of how how you got where you are why you made some of the decisions that you did because we talked to a lot of activists and a number of them have really not been as you know business people it's been an area that they haven't even thought even entrepreneurially and yet in the movement now it seems as though the entrepreneurial spirit and the activist spirit are coming closer and closer and closer together as we realize those are the people that know how to get things done so well tell me just sort of about your childhood did you grow up here in california yes i did i was born in gary indiana but my folks moved to san diego and or during world war ii what had happened was that they basically started from arkansas and went north to chicago and and gary indiana area and then some of my uncles and older cousins were drafted or enlisted in war and when they were released they came back to san diego so the call went out hey the promised land is not the north and the steel mills no no no there's a real promised land out here on the west coast where you know opportunities abound and so um all of my mother's relatives pulled up their stakes in in the midwest and headed west like a lot of people during the war and after the war did you have siblings yes there was seven of us uh-huh i'm number five of seven so you know i held a real strong valuable position in the hierarchy of who was important in my family but it worked out fine there's four girls and and three boys so when did you come north to l.a for the first time in 1957 when i graduated from high school don't try to add it i'll tell you later that's the year i graduated too okay so we're on the same page yeah we are right and i i had a big 50 scholarship to ucla from one of the african-american sororities and i came up here and i had three or four brothers and sisters that lived here in la and we had a little house that was first rented by my oldest brother when he finished pharmacy school in at uc berkeley and he came back and established a residence that as we graduated from high school we migrated to l.a my brother's sisters and i one by one until the last one arrived so did you stay in l.a no not not the first time i was at ucla first time away from home and during a time when there was one more recession and finding work was a little difficult i had the ambition and the only job that i could find in those days was to clean house which i did on on every saturday i cleaned this the house of of one of my junior high school teachers that lived here in in the la area and then after she couldn't afford to to hire me anymore it became increasingly difficult to find a job in those days in the 50s people think that these things only happened in the south but it's not true if you were dark-skinned african-american you could not work pretty much any place here in l.a and or san diego for that matter which was part of the reason why i had left san diego and moved here was because of the extremely conservative attitude in san diego thinking it would be better in westwood right right yeah and not only that it's it was um not only was it was it the the bullocks and the may companies and and those kind of retail stores that that wouldn't hire you um but even um african-american businesses if if you were to a certain hue you couldn't get hired there too so finding a job was was pretty tough so you ended up going back yeah i did my folks could not afford to to send any of us to college and so we kind of had to make it with my brothers it was pretty easy for them to to find things to do using their resources um they could they could get by you know from doing lawns to delivering papers to all those kinds of things right but for us women it was a little bit difficult and did you at this time already have a sense that you were a lesbian no i didn't i didn't come until i was in my mid 20s and i never really thought about it even though there were a couple of incidences that happened i.e uh with one of my girlfriends when we were like 10 or 11 and watching the movies at the elementary school auditorium for five cents to get in there and watch johnny mac brown and long ranger and you know the cereals that you had to go back week after week to see you know we would play around with each other touch each other but it didn't click that there was that that i was a lesbian or that there was anything anything more wrong with that than if it was a boy that i was i was playing with right but i was a natural um tomboy i could beat my brothers shooting marbles playing tops playing football basketball ping pong you name it you know i it was it was in there you know when when um we hear people and and i can say myself included in that group uh say they were born that way i was born that way you know nobody taught me no one gave me these skills no one um said you know go and try your brother's sports jacket on and see how cute you look i did that on my own but it's still never quite jive because um in in my family sex like a lot of families in those days you didn't talk about it it was never discussed not even heterosexual sex was discussed so you know needless to say there was not going to be any conversation about uh homosexual but you had an impression didn't you that it was a bad thing i mean we should almost don't know where it came from exactly well it came from the people around us you know kids are are are pretty open pretty clear little people that generally don't have a lot of prejudices or i don't believe have any except what they get from the adults around them so it was it was that you know and my idea of of what a lesbian and and what a quote-unquote was uh did not begin to understand the wide variety and wide range of different kinds of behavior that lesbians and gays represent so where were you in your 20s when all this changed i was here in l.a i had started to work i got a job at safeway market supermarket and there was another lady that was was hired and she um invited me to dinner one day and i said yeah fine i'll come to your place if you come to mine first so the first invitation went out and we set a date and she came over and and i cooked dinner for and it was like fans hanging out from work and and she felt um really comfortable to me just you know being a friend um because all my other brothers and sisters had married by then um all of the older ones anyway and so um i you know i welcomed a friend a close friend that i worked with so she invited me to her place a couple of nights later and during the course of the evening and drinking which i didn't normally do i could feel that this was not just an ordinary girlfriend come by and have a little snack with me kind of evening so after dinner the fireplace was lit and and i thought this was just really kind of fabulous to to uh have been invited and and have this kind of evening going on and pretty soon she leaned over and um asked me you know really up close and i backed up a little she said have you ever been with a woman and i said ben how you know she says and you are aren't you i said i am what am i and she said oh no i don't believe it you know i just assumed that you were you were what that you're a lesbian so oh no no no no no no no no no she said you mean you've never kissed a woman i don't think so no not me so um she said well why don't why don't we just kiss i said no no no she asked the same thing as you well what's what's what's the deal with it you know where did this attitude of of um not knowing number one who you are and and uh you know not wanting to experiment even with that and i told her you know what i knew was that lesbians had the short haircuts and at the time i was wearing my hair longer had short haircuts and and they wore levi's and always white very starched iron shirts with the with the the cuffs turned up on the sleeves and a pack of cigarettes stuck in that well i didn't smoke and i didn't own the white shirt right exactly and my hair was long [Laughter] and she said well um did you ever think of what their counterparts might be like you know because she was very effeminate and quite the lady i said well no i thought that was that they were the ones that were she said no generally speaking these types over here that you just described are usually with people like me like you you mean yes so then we we put it on fast forward she invited me to bed and i didn't answer but i gradually made my way to the bed either no and so i um undressed farming style i mean i kept on all my undergarments i put my shoes so that i could do you know if i had to leave i had this all planned so one motion would have me fully dressed and out the door you know in case i changed my mind or i don't know what it was more danger there than you could imagine right and of course there was yeah it was at the beginning of the danger but i made it through that and we ended up being together for a little over 11 years wow oh and and did you move in together yeah we did um shortly after you know how women move you know we don't waste time say i know your phone number and your name and so you want to you like me right yeah well the first is coming up two weeks from now so why don't we start looking for an apartment so that's kind of the way that went don't waste any wrong no no so we moved in and did it scare you oh yeah you think that's what you might be i mean the the word that she couldn't even say right right it did and for years um you know i kept up the facade of not not being a lesbian and started you know wearing makeup and stuff that i never did before [Music] she was bisexual i found out later and had her own rules about you know how our life should be and me being a neophyte didn't know so i got all the input from her about what we were to be like what was life like then i mean it was it must have been sort of a double life in a way because you're at work right the market and then sort of was there a community or a group or places to go or you know what was life like well it was um very lonely then because it was the two of us and she was recently had recently moved here from the midwest and i hadn't been out so consequently we didn't have any gay or lesbian friends that we could turn to to play with or to cry on their shoulder or lament about or to tell whatever yeah yep exactly right yeah so were there social places that that you could go or went we did find out after um two or three years of being together we found out about a couple of clubs and i worked in another supermarket that was in fact right across the street from catch and there was that was like the neighborhood i found out later where most uh african-american lesbian gays lived so we started there and eventually we found out about a couple of clubs and we eventually bought a house together in in englewood in a very conservative neighborhood so when it came time to go out to these clubs i had the uh old superman superwoman technique i guess together i would change clothes in my car that was my booth and i came out so you didn't want to walk from your door to the car no what is yeah my dad clothes you know in the motel socks that's what we used to call those thin black ones that you could see your ankle bones and stuff through and so i would i would bag those up in in my brown bag and then uh wait till i got out in the car and away from the my immediate neighborhood because what if somebody found out you know that that really wouldn't be kosher so and were the was it uh were the clubs a good place to go yeah they were um as as they've served the community and i know mine has served the community um in a little bit different way in that i've been there for a long time and the climate as far as gays and lesbians coming out have changed over the years but it was a place where you could meet people and eventually get invited to their parties and and have people over for dinner and barbecues and and different things like that one couldn't advertise the place really could you uh no no it was and and generally they were way out or in in areas um that were considered a little bit seedy you know the the club that the main club that we went to was um topless bar most of the nights but then [Music] we were there one or two nights a week so what made you decide to get your own place to open your own club well i was pushed by economics and prior to to getting the club i owned a boutique which was my first venture at being self-employed clothing boutique yeah ladies clothing and um i knew from the time that i was a little kid though that i wanted to to have my own business or be my own boss and i found it difficult working for people even though while i was there i did the best job that i could do and i never gave anybody any hassle but in my heart i knew that that you know it was it was not um what i wanted for myself and that i wanted to be self-employed so the opportunity came and uh i opened up a boutique recession another one came in in the early 70s and that meant um the first thing that women who which was the population that i served um the first thing that they give up when when the money crunch is set in is the things that they do for themselves including buying clothes getting their hair done nails done whatever it is that they can stop doing to save money usually it's about denying themselves you know some of the things that they would like to have so there would be money for the family and money for exactly sure and that would be it during the recession pretty much so your business was pretty hard hit uh yeah yeah it was um but i ended up still hanging onto it for a couple of years and in the interim um opening the club and that that's a little story all by itself too as i mentioned before i worked across the street at a supermarket four years prior to my um finding the the catch and coming back there and at that time like i said you know this was the 50s when we didn't have equal opportunity and discrimination laws and so people did pretty much what they wanted to and most of them elected not to have any integration in their businesses homes and and schools even you know by virtue of uh where we lived yeah yeah you got it so um when i decided that that i would get into the bar business it was either that or a liquor store and one of my brothers owned the liquor store and i knew he worked very hard and and long hours and i said well there's got to be a better way and plus it seemed like a it would be a lot more fun and then we had gun smoke with miss kitty on that was the top one showing you just how to get her on a bar right right you know the girl could do it she knew how to hold down a bar and keep all the cowboys in order and i said boy that that seems like that could could be something that i would really really like to do now wouldn't she like to know she was the role model for a dyke bar owner great and there were laws against um i didn't have any experience i couldn't get any experience because there were laws against women attending bar then women could be cocktail waitress but waitresses but they could not be mixologists or bartenders unless they own the place unless they own the place so i drove by one day when i went you know to check it out just to see if i might see a sign or any kind of hints that um the club would be available or for sale and i didn't and i went to see another bar and i came back that same evening bought uh l.a times looked in the business opportunities section and there was the club right there so i went back out that same night to confirm and verify the address and it was it was the same club that was right across the street from where i used to work now did you intend when you bought the club that it would be a place that gay and lesbian people could go and hang out or did you no not it was it was uh i still wasn't out or out to my family in particular that i was just so afraid of of of losing them or them ostracizing me and wanting to please them that that was my concern then but little did i know it doesn't matter about what my plans were as soon as the children as i called them found out that i had opened a club then within a very short time it became a gay club by night the older caucasian people retired people that had been drinking at the bar for 50 years uh remained you know and i understand that you have a little bit of this quality of being able to mix up different folk that you do this in sacramento really well that don't seem to to some people to fit uh can can kind of mix and and we ended up with these three different groups of people with the older whites during the daytime and then the blue collar blacks that were generally homophobic too and then the gaze later on at night um and then i'd have a fear about what if these folks cost and eventually they did and everybody had a good time so i think uh we were all introduced to the fact that that we can all get along if and if we take the time to to know each other you know there's uh there's been some criticism over the years that because the bars were the first and early on the only place we got together that we probably have a higher population in a.a now than you know any other group in the world because it was really sort of the only place to do it but what was your own feeling about your place because i know you must have been proud of it oh i was extremely proud one of the things that i wanted was to have a place that was right there in the neighborhood that would be comparable to any and not having the the kind of financial backing that i needed to make this happen all at once it took years of virtually doing most of the work myself you know painting and the plumbing and djing and whatever it was so funny speaking of djing whenever i would make a mix because it was not a dj that blended then the kids were just clapping you but they were happy to be there and i was happy to to you know be able to to have that happen for us too and i um i would imagine that after a while people thought of you as more than just the owner of the disco i mean i know you to be a person that a lot of people feel they can talk to and uh and you sort of became like a one-woman social services agency really along the way tell us a little about the people who came there and how you saw things change if you did sure but there were a lot of changes um as far as and like you mentioned before we have a higher incidence of alcoholism and drug abuse in the gay and lesbian community than in the broader community but we we met there i don't i don't really think that that that contributes solely to what um to our big numbers but it was a place to to meet and to hang out and be with with your own kind in in a space where that that was all that it was and you didn't have to worry about looking over your shoulders because everybody there was uh whether they were out or not generally you know they were lesbian and gays i myself had a problem with uh alcohol and drugs and am sober now and have been for the last 11 years a lot of people probably wonder how do you reconcile having a bar and being sober and we also have have of course cocaine anonymous meetings there and and aaa meetings and rap sessions and in the past we've had adult children of alcoholics meetings fundraisers a place where people could bring their parents when they hadn't talked to them and and by now i'm as old as as uh some of the kids parents so you know they can bring their folks in and say you know this is not a dive where we're doing all kinds of things wherever your imagination is taking you this is not the place where i hang out and so you're like the credibility for it's okay to go there exactly and do you talk to the parents i mean have some sure conversation with them about because they'll be worried about their kids right i imagine oh yes i have met a lot of them have sat down and talked to a lot and it still goes on very recently one of my brother's employees of 20-something years she called me to tell me that her daughter was coming to my club so and then i have of course um uh ex-exes that their kids are now old enough to come to the club and quite a few of them do but yeah i think that um we were able to to talk to parents and able to demonstrate that um you know except for for what we do in our beds it's pretty much not so interesting not nearly where most people take it you know it's it's it's not all of that it's real simple life that that most of us live and lead what kind of changes have you seen in the broader world about our community um in terms of you know i mean everybody is talking about us now the words gay and lesbian can be printed in the paper right and there's debate in you know in the churches in the in the colleges in everywhere um just from your point of view how do you see the way things have changed and some of the for better and some of the for worse sure like most change it's i believe um a cyclic situation where in a few years ago we were i think at the at the top of this cycle of acceptance but at more of a superficial level i think now the people that accept us really accept us and and and love us and will come out and stand for us i'm speaking you know generally now and and what i've found in in my relationships with people like the parents of some of my customers and and my own parents and um but on the other hand uh as is true of um the gay the civil rights movement and now it's true of the gay rights movement movement where in some areas going back to square one and um we have you know the far right and we have um you know in our uh community not a not a real broad acceptance of of uh african-american gays and and lesbians well there's been a as a matter of fact there's been a real attempt i think to drive a wedge between the civil rights community and activists which generally means african-american civil rights activists or at least civil rights movement and the gay and lesbian movement to i know up in sacramento when i have a bill or anybody has a bill that might help gay and lesbian people there are always african-american ministers who come up to testify or of course dr king's daughter niece has been going all around the country to talk about the difference what's the response been in the community do you think well i'm i'm not going to pretend to have my posts on on everything i can just basically tell you how i feel and in response to dr king's niece i along with phil wilson and some other people were invited by coretta scott king who was dr king's widow to come to atlanta to her center for social change in an effort to find out more about us so the fact that the niece is doing something um is by no means indicative of what i feel that the king family in general um civil rights or civil rights as far as they're concerned well and coretta scott king's one of the first people to sign the the marriage declaration exactly um about you know that we we ought to be able to marry which is a still very radical step for a person to take and i think gives a lot of credibility i think the african-american civil rights movement is the civil rights movement right i mean that they're the only folks that can give credibility to anybody else sure women i think yeah we we launched it and when i say we i'm talking about african americans launched civil disobedience and civil rights movements in this country and it's as in in any great movement or any great person those that come along are going to resemble it some kind of way just as in in the civil rights movement we we got our model from from gandhi right and where gandhi probably got his model from from someone else in history so i don't think if there's any anything wrong and everything right with with imitating something that worked and collaborating with something that has worked and i think it's more important today than ever to realize that if we're discriminated against as gays then the next folks on the totem pole this this same bible the same ministers that are that are quoting um always the the old testament because and and even though they consider themselves christians and i might be getting a little bit off so you can check me if you want i wouldn't think of that but the christian by the by virtue of its word means christ-like and so we have to go to the new testament and deal with what christ purported as far as christianity is concerned and he only had two things that we had to do and that was love our neighbors as ourselves and to love god with all our heart and mind and soul those were the only two commandments so when you start talking this old testament stuff about lying with this one and that you know if if you're not not eating pork and if you're not not eating shrimp and if you're your wife sits beside you in in church and and you don't put her out when when she's on there monthly then you're not doing the old testament and you can't take out the things that you want right because you feel it necessary in order to have power to pick someone that that you think has less power than you and and try to step on them well and don't these quotes sound familiar too i mean i i was in birmingham in 1963 these are the same guys that were standing in the doors of their churches then exactly you know to exclude another population that they're now trying to embrace to do homophobia right which is yeah and this is this is my my biggest p is about that how how short the memory is of some of these ministers that don't see that that the same kind of prejudice was was what what got us here we came over on the good ship jesus or something like that you know when they when the slaves were first brought here was in in the name of of jesus um that it it's we're still not on the on the top of of the list for people to come home with with these same um right wing people african americans are not on on the top of the list and and and and it could change really really fast and i think that a lot of these ministers um and i might get into trouble saying this but i've been known to be in trouble before are are selling out you know two um to these these right-wing groups and and allowing themselves to to be puppets in the name of of uh the bible and and what he is and what is not for us where the truth of the matter is that we're everywhere gays and lesbians are including the pulpits of some of the most famous churches black white or hispanic or wherever you know 10 percent is 10 and i think we're across the board with that well and of course i mean that you know the the best kept non-secret i think in so many churches is that you know that in in just about every african-american church i ever saw and act and dr sylvia rue said this last night too you know your choir master and your the the person who plays the organ they're gay you know gay men right and everybody knows but it can't be acknowledged that and there's plenty of preachers are too you know i i've talked to and i'm not just you know taking this from the heart this time i've talked to so many young men you know over the years and and we find it with priests and you know it's coming out a little bit more but the priests weren't the only ones that that have have been uh guilty of that um you know and i've talked to a lot of young men over the 25 years that i've been in this business and uh plenty of them their first homosexual experience was was with their uh minister of someone else at the church that they attended well jewel is funny to me you know you here you are you're like the owner of a bar and that's really how you characterize yourself but then we hear well but you and phil wilson were invited by coretta scott king to come back and talk about this community i mean you have become really a leader i know that at ucla gay and lesbian student organization named an award after you and your work in the community i mean you know it's well known and very much admired there are a lot of business owners in who are members of our community who don't see themselves as participating in the community though it's sort of like you know i'm a businessman this is what i do i'm a businesswoman this is what i do um what brought you to go sort of just beyond the the bottom line of your business and really because you're deeply involved in the community and have done such leadership well i feel um genuinely grateful for being given the opportunity to earn a living for 25 years doing something that i love and having a party one big 25-year party and uh so this is the way that i give back but we're individuals like i said before so you know what works for me or what motivates me might not motivate you know the next person but i have no choice in the matter you know i was i was moved and put in the position to to uh be there for my community even long before i knew that i was ready to to step out and and and be that for us you mean you were asked or you were moved by your heart yeah i was i was moved by my heart and basically there was no one else around either you know um our history is very very short as you know you know it's 1960s i think maybe some of the radical fairies might go back to the late 50s but that's a relatively short history and so when i got started in the business and in the early 70s there were no role models for me that i knew of and i thought it was really important that that i be that for as many people as i could and you're are you you're in a relationship now yes long-term relationship will you talk a little about your partner oh most definitely please yeah she um rue and i met at um at the the first african-american gay and lesbian church that was founded by uh bishop carl bean and she told me later that she had come to the club maybe three or four years before then didn't know who i was but when she was sitting at the bar she said she just saw it that she didn't know who this woman was but she knew that one day she would be with me so four or five years later we we met um i was determined at that time that i wouldn't get in another relationship hopefully ever but at least for a long long time and i was like three years into this commitment to myself um not to not to get involved in in um a relationship i dated but nothing serious and so we met at unity church um i've been one of the the people that helped found and helped get it started along with the minority aids project and rue who had lived in the outskirts of town she liked mountains and canyons and that sort of thing so she was unknown to me and one day we were asked to work on getting this bus ride together where there was going to be an aids demonstration out at uh the episcopalian church by the sea reverend malcolm's church and um so we were having um afternoon ladies tea dances because you asked me about how the scene had changed well the club scene changed and the gay and lesbian scene overall change from it being predominantly a male um [Music] you know predominantly a male thing as was my club most of my customers were guys you know there'd be a handful of women and five or six hundred guys on any given night there what started to change um in the early 80s and women who usually just had house parties or i went to one or two clubs was starting to come out and and be seen publicly so this was an opportunity to feed into that so we had women's tea dances after church services on on sundays and roo came over and helped me cook which i did a lot of in those days too and after the dance we were to go on to this candlelight vigil out at the church by the sea and so we missed each other and she had to go because she was organizing the people that were riding on the bus so i got my car and i broke down the tin freeway and went out to the church and i was there by the time the bus pulled up i was there and um uh i told her yeah i apologize for missing the bus and and so she said she it was okay and we sat down and she said that she was a little bit cold so i took my jacket off you know chivalry is not dead here and put it over her legs and then afterwards i asked her if she wanted to ride home with me and so she had to go back and tell the folks that she was not going to take the ride back on the bus then you know how it is with girls two weeks later she moved in yeah but she came to spend the night and have dinner and uh never went home so how long ago was that eight years yeah that's great yeah and tell us a little more about her what she engaged in and what her life is about yeah well rue after we uh got together opened rue's house which was the first shelter for women and children with aids in the country and she did that for seven or eight years and this and closed after the holidays this past year with the protease inhibitors and a lot of other people opening the need which was what we had committed to what she had committed to when we first got into it was she'd be there to until it was there was no more need and and that time came and so now she's retired and we uh got a place in in the mountains and that's where i go when i'm not here working and doing my thing in l.a and going to school now too you're going to school yeah well you know it's never too late don't i know so what what are you going to school for i'm going to school for traditional chinese medicine i'm in my third plus year and when i finish next september i'll have a bachelor's of science degree in oriental medicine and once i pass the state boards then i'll be a licensed acupuncture puncturist and i'm thinking now of of going two more years after that to either get my phd or my omd and it gives me another opportunity to serve our community in a different way drug and alcohol abuse of course is going to be at the top of my list of things that i'll be dealing with as well as natural treatments for people with aids and and then one more of course women's issues and um the health problems that that we experience uh you know jewel there's been um it's interesting to me we you know the community adopted as its flag the rainbow flag and i think that we have like any community or any country or any culture we have our aspirations and one of the aspirations is to be a true rainbow community and i think there's a lot of commitment to it but my own impression is that we're still pretty far away from it sure how do you see us how would you give us a report card really in terms of specifically around our sort of race relations i think there's been some progress made but we kind of imitate the broader community and that there's still a lot of separatism going on um it feels a lot now like it was in in the 70s when a group of us formed a black gay coalition another group that was led by susan mcgreevy got the aclu to the the aclu's gay and lesbian um chapter to add in and and i was fortunate enough to chair the uh minority gay and lesbian issues um committee and if you know things were right then that would have been necessary to to be and over the years i've been fortunate enough to to be able to i think access certain boards certain organizations and um and and you know try to to to do what i could to improve race relations well i don't know if you were fortunate enough for whether people just begged you to come do the work well i feel fortunate in in that this was something in my heart to do i didn't do a lot around around the civil rights movement because that took money too you had to be able to to buy your bus ticket down too but but my heart was always there and so this um dealing with with um race relationships race relations among um gay and lesbians gave me an opportunity to to uh get some of that resolve that that i couldn't do then but i guess we're still i mean we're certainly still struggling with it and the good news is that you you struggle with it right the bad news is that you still have to and that some people don't even choose to do that i know in the old days i uh even in terms of the the bar scene there were a lot of places where i know people of color uh just so happen they had to have three or four different ids sure they hadn't brought that or oh the place was full they'd had to go get back in line um have you seen that change i mean that was sort of like the overt stuff goes underground or right there's there's only um so much overtly that will be tolerated now based upon the work that martin luther king and and then in our case ron grayson's and the phil wilson's and the carl beans and then um [Music] you know the rest of us the silvia rules and you know there's a lot of us that have been out there stephanie and you know um but you know we won't tolerate that and we started not tolerating it back in in the early 70s and um you know we went out and we marched even though i would prefer to have all the african-americans and and anybody else for that matter as long as their spirit was right come to the club uh well the club's been pretty integrated don't you think over here over the last 20 so years oh yes i mean it's i know that it was a very comfortable place for um for folks in the community african-american community to come and that that was rare in the beginning sure and maybe still rare i'm not sure in terms of comfort but i know it was a lot of people felt real comfortable going there right a great place yeah we we never discriminated i don't i don't believe in reverse um discrimination um and there's some of us that that do and and you know we're like i said one more time we're real different and and i don't pretend to speak for for everyone you know just for myself times have changed and um and times have not changed so that's the past and that's the present let me ask you just a couple final questions really because we're i think we're down to four or five minutes left okay um what do you see for the future for i know for yourself because i see now you're going to be an acupuncturist and a doctor of chinese medicine and i'm glad to know that that's going to be good for me um but what do you see in terms of the larger future kind of for the community and what i guess we're loosely calling the gay and lesbian movement but it's this is a difficult time for us um sheila for a lot of reasons we're being attacked uh viciously by the right um we're trying to recover and in in our case uh with african americans we're not doing a really good job of doing that from the devastation of the virus and too many people died too many folks that would be activists now too many folks that would be integrationists now too many folks that would leading us out to personally be in the forefront and attack these right-wing folk on their turf even have gone on you know they they're not here and so there's a big gap in the leadership there's a big gap of people that are not there between the few older folk that survived and the younger ones that came up there's this big whole of folk that that have died you know anytime you take the numbers that we lost and are still losing in the war and remove them then it's it's hard to recover from that so i really don't know except that that those of us like you and i and and others have to where we should be at a time where we could kind of look back and do some mentoring we we've got to got to put our holsters and stuff back on and go out there and and still try to keep up the fight well and it's uh it's hard because young people don't have you know it's like they're called upon to make up leadership on their own because there's so many ways in which they don't know who to turn to or you know or what to to gain experience from not that young people ever are real good at taking advice even if there was a whole bunch of people there to tell it to them um well i um i very much appreciate your being here this was really fun for me thank you yes i enjoyed it and thank you for having me well and jule tyse williams from catch one i want to invite all of you many of you live in l.a but a whole lot of you who watch this show don't so whenever you're in l.a you got to go to the catch it's a great place and you would get used to it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you