Albert Williams – We Need the Human Touch (clip)
Interviewed by Rob Stephens on October 8, 2009
Rob Stephens: What’d you think would be most needed in, for the neighborhood – we talked about this a lot, especially in the sessions with you and Brother Revels and Pastor Harrison – but, for the community around Saint Joseph, to really, you know in the midst of all the changes that are going on, and the development and university interactions and all the student, the growing student community. What would be really, what do you think are the things that are really needed to, kind of continue some of that vibrancy that y’all have been talking about, about the neighborhood from the time that you really lived there.
Albert Williams: I think we need the human touch. We don’t know each other, we don’t talk to each other anymore.
RS: Yep. Mm-hm.
AW: We talk at each other. We don’t feel each other’s care. This is gone. This is, you know, even the children. For instance, it’s sad, I don’t even know some of my nieces and nephews. They go to church right there. That’s how much it has changed, you know. Because it used to, we would get together and you knew your cousins, you knew your brothers’ [and] your sisters’ children. My sister’s got a grandson that works at Mama Dip’s, and this kid was grown before I even knew him. [Ha, ha, ha, ha]. That’s how much it has changed. You know. They don’t seem to care. For instance, I got two girls. Two granddaughters, one finished college. I have more association with her children than I do my own. You know, so I always say – I’m a kind of hard guy I guess – if you can’t get me my flowers now, when I’m dead what’s the use of coming?
