Mary Lou Williams Rutgers Interview Block 883 (Q13071)

 He adapted his ballet to the mass. He's working on it now. He's going to do some of the things over. He's not satisfied. Neither am I because the best thing he has there is the "Our Father" prayer and the "People in trouble". See, I explained the story to him. "People in Trouble" was written for these people that were rioting in Harlem. They weren't hurting anybody but the black people of Harlem in all the black districts, because when they bombed people out instead of getting them out in a different way, there were some older people in Harlem that had gone to the little stores for years and years and didn't know where to go and they were too sick to walk 5 or 6 blocks for things like that and then they began to rob us. That was written for people in trouble, children in pain, too mean to care, too weak to share, work so hard trying to find a brother, became impatient, now we hate each other. Now the part explaining, .. Trying to find a brother, if you walk down the street and somebody say, "Hi, sister! Hi, brother! ", that would infuriate me because they come in here a couple of times and stole my things. I said, "Man, the least thing I would do if I was going to steal something and hated whites so had, I'd go down there and get it. " I said, "You could be stealing from people with money and they still haven't got enough money for you to do that. "  I told him the story of it and he did a good thing on that; and also "Lazarus" is really terrific. I like "Lazarus".