Albany civil rights icon Dr. Alice Green has died.
Alice Green, who died Tuesday at age 84, was born in South Carolina. Soon after, her family migrated north to the Adirondacks. As a young woman, determined to become an educator, Green attended SUNY Albany. She has a doctorate in criminal justice and became involved with civil rights. Green is best known for her leadership as director of the Center for Law and Justice, which she founded in 1985 after Albany Police officers shot Jessie Davis to death in his Arbor Hill apartment.
Her involvement in social and civil rights spanned decades.
For a time, Green directed Trinity Institution, a youth and family services center in Albany’s South End. While there, she also did community organizing.
In 1964 Green founded what would become one of Albany's longest-running independent Black newspapers. “We started with a mimeographed newsletter called 'The Voice of The South End.' They were distributed to people in housing projects and pretty much throughout the South End," Green said. "And people would start reading and talking about issues that were presented. It was also a way of informing people about programs at Trinity Institution and other places in the South End.”
By the early 1980s Albany area radio personality Art Mitchell was running The Scene, which continued printing until 1991. In 2019, Green tried to revive the paper, but with the decline of print media and the arrival of COVID, the revival was short-lived.
In 1998, Green ran for lieutenant governor on the Green Party ticket and campaigned for mayor of Albany in 2005, garnering 25 percent of the vote in a loss to incumbent Jerry Jennings.
Through the years Green threw her support behind other police shooting victims including Ellazar Williams and Jordan Young. In 2021 she went face-to-face with city police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest-turned-occupation at South Station that stretched on for days.
In 2021 she released her memoir, “We Who Believe in Freedom: Activism and the Struggle for Social Justice.”
“The whole theme of it is and why I chose the title is that we who are a bit involved in the struggle, we cannot rest, it still goes on," Green said. "And this is one way of trying to make sure that that happens.”
In 2016 Green received the John Brown Lives! Spirit of John Brown Freedom Award, given at Brown's farm in North Elba just outside the village of Lake Placid.
“John Brown certainly was a hero of mine and the resistance to injustice is something that's very important to me because the work that I do calls upon me to be strong in fighting injustice and racism. He saw injustice and he was passionate about it and he decided that he needed to fight that injustice. And I think that is a strong message. John Brown is alive! It took me a long time to realize what they meant by that. But he's alive. The spirit is there,” Green said.
City and county officials, including many she clashed with over the years, released statements Tuesday celebrating Green’s life and lamenting her death.
Those who knew and worked with Green at the Center For Law and Justice vow to continue her work. Funeral and memorial arrangements were not immediately announced.
