(L)inked in Controversy
An AIDS activist and a South Side entrepreneur go toe-to-toe over a tattoo
By Natalie A. Collier
Under different circumstances, one might imagine that James Prewitt Jr. and Rae Lewis-Thornton could be allies.
Prewitt is a proud, Afro-centric entrepreneur. Standing 6-feet-2 and dressed in a business suit, the bald, clean-cut business owner has a unique preppy meets urban style and a confident swagger. He is a business man’s business man. In his day job, he is vice president of sales for a Canadian-based medical supply company. But he also owns South Side Tattoo & Body Piercing on South Stony Island Boulevard. His shop, located in a squat storefront would be easy to miss were it not for the glowing “Tattoos” sign. But the shop is quickly gaining a reputation for quality service. Prewitt says opening the shop is a reflection of his personal commitment to revitalizing the predominately African-American neighborhood that surrounds it.
Rae Lewis-Thornton has a love for that very same community. An intense woman with shoulder-length salt and pepper hair, she favors casually chic designer labels that seem to imply she’s accustomed to making big decisions. She is a renowned AIDS activist who has traveled around the country—visiting schools, churches, community groups—railing against the myths about how HIV/AIDS is transmitted and stumping for greater funding and support for HIV/AIDS education. She is especially committed to ministering to African Americans, who make up the largest percentage of people living with and contracting the virus that causes AIDS.
But Prewitt and Lewis-Thornton are not allies. In fact, they are currently locked in a bitter discrimination dispute that has landed in the lap of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations.
In July, both Prewitt and Lewis-Thornton squared off before a hearing officer in the third floor conference room of the Human Relations Commission’s headquarters at 740 N. Sedgwick. She says the tattoo artists at South Side refused her service because she has AIDS. He says Lewis-Thornton entered the shop with an agenda and an attitude, and that if she’d waited 15 minutes for the right tattoo artist, she would have left his shop a happy customer.
For more than a year, the two have leveled charges and counter-charges against one another before they finally had an opportunity to tell their respective versions of the contretemps to an impartial adjudicator.
Here is what they both agree on: At 1:02 p.m. on May 1, 2006, Lewis-Thornton and two friends walked into South Side, 8548 S. Stony Island.
“I’d been thinking about getting a tattoo for years,” she told the hearing officer. “I wanted to go (to South Side) because it’s Black-owned … and (one of her friends) said they were really good to her and talked her through everything.”
Lewis-Thornton looked among the “flash”—tattoo speak for stock images—until she found the perfect image, a butterfly. She was giddy with the thought of the small, intricately designed butterfly being tattooed between her shoulder blades.
South Side’s body piercer, Roy Pierce, gave Lewis-Thornton an indemnity form to fill out. The third paragraph stopped her.
It read: “I agree that I do not have HIV/AIDS or carry the HIV virus.” Lewis-Thornton, who has lived with AIDS for more than 20 years, could not truthfully sign the form.
She leaned over the counter and spoke quietly to Pierce. “I have AIDS.”
James Prewitt and his employees agree with Lewis-Thornton’s version of events up to that point. The stories diverge when it comes to what transpired next.
According to Lewis-Thornton, Pierce said he’d go in the back and ask if the only tattoo artist who’d arrived at work on time, Victor M. Torres, would agree to serve her. He walked away, she said, stayed gone for a little while and came back shaking his head, “He said no.”
“I asked him if it was because I have AIDS,” Lewis-Thornton testified. And he said, “Sorry. It’s just our company’s policy.”
