Lawyer's death is an immeasurable loss for the Adirondacks | News, Sports, Jobs

Alice Green (photo provided)

In a place like the Adirondacks, it's easy to feel lonely or alienated when you look around and don't see many people who look like you. Without a connection to the history of those who lived before you, that isolation is all the more poignant.

Alice Green, a staunch civil rights activist who grew up in the hamlet of Witherbee in Essex County, described this experience in her memoir “Outsiders: Stories of Growing Up Black in the Adirondacks.” She also spoke about it in interviews throughout her life, giving a voice to other black Adirondacks whose similar experiences might otherwise have gone unwritten.

Green died Tuesday after suffering cardiac arrest at an Albany hospital, the Albany Times Union reported this week. She was 84.

The legacy she leaves behind is immense. Her influence has touched not only the Adirondacks, but the entire state. She served as legislative director of the New York Civil Liberties Union in the early 1980s, and in 1985 she founded the Center for Law and Justice in Albany, an organization that educates communities about civil rights and criminal justice. In 1986, Governor Mario Cuomo appointed her deputy director of the state Department of Probation and Corrections. In 1998, she ran for lieutenant governor on the Green Party ticket with Al Lewis, boosting the party's standing in New York.

Yet she returned here again and again from the time her family first stepped off the train into the Adirondacks on August 13, 1948—they had moved from Greenville, South Carolina, during the Great Migration—and maintained a residence here until her death. In 1997, she founded the Paden Institute and Retreat for Writers of Color, bringing up to three writers a year to Essex to write for free.

“She was a legendary civil rights activist, a passionate advocate for justice who fought for national causes and for individual families,” said Peter Slocum, president of the Essex County Historical Society and the Adirondack History Museum. “She was also an incredibly important Adirondack historian, having grown up in the mining country of southern Essex County. Her memoirs … were published last year and helped bring to light often-overlooked realities of life in the Adirondacks.”

Amy Godine, author of “The Black Woods: Striving for Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier”, recalls her first encounter with Green when she was invited to his family reunion at Witherbee many years ago. She was touched that the family, even though scattered across the country, still called this place home.

“It moved me very much to see this commitment and love for the region,” she said.

“She was tough, she was very outspoken and very direct and combative in her views and her vision of the region,” added Godine.

When they appeared together on panels, they were “sometimes on the same side, often not at all”, she added. Godine's view of the Adirondacks was shaped by his “Lay historian”, while Green's thoughts were deeply rooted in her own experiences.

In a 2019 interview with the Enterprise, Green described growing up in Witherbee during the civil rights movement. She experienced social segregation—white residents were friendly, but black families weren't really accepted into the community's social fabric. Friendships with white friends didn't extend far; often, white friends didn't visit her home.

“We were completely shunned by our closest friends while her brother was in town,” Green wrote in an afterword to Sally E. Svenson’s 2017 book “Blacks in the Adirondacks.”

“As we grew older, we expressed our disappointment and pain, but her behavior did not change even in adulthood,” she wrote. “We felt hopelessly shut out from the white world and confined to our own, which lacked the necessary mass of black peers to satisfy our need for honest and meaningful social interactions.”

In a review of Godine's book published in January in the Adirondack Almanac, Green wrote that knowing the history of black settlers had changed her view of the place where she grew up.

“It would have been inspiring and important for my psychological and social development if I had known that black people had come to the Adirondacks long before my family in search of a good life,” she wrote. “My siblings and I were convinced that we were the first black people to settle in the area. We didn't know it because no one around us knew.”

In her writings, Green reflects on her own upbringing, gaining new insights and connecting her experiences and their influence on her.

“She was an eyewitness to her own upbringing,” Said Godine.

“She was incredibly wild. I'm going to miss that. I miss it already.” added Godine. “There is no one like her. No activist, black or white, fighting for justice had her passion and commitment, her determination and her composure. She exuded a certain calm even as she really called out an audience for racism.”

After the state allocated funding through the Environmental Conservation Fund in 2019 to increase diversity in the Adirondacks, Green told Enterprise that simply increasing the numbers only goes so far. Diversity is great, but inclusion is necessary, she said.

Green wrote in the afterword to Svenson’s book that inclusion “undoubtedly a complex and unpleasant process.”

“It asks white people to learn about and embrace the true history and culture of others and to question their own implicit biases and unearned privileges. Furthermore, it requires white people to accept changes that may disrupt their comfort zone, such as a person of color moving in next door, and to view and treat them as equals.”

To feel a sense of belonging, having a connection to the history of those who came before you is essential.

It wasn't long ago that the history of black settlers in the Adirondacks, the region's connection to the abolitionist movement, and its links to the Underground Railroad were largely unknown to most people here. John Brown Lives! – the Friends of the John Brown Farm – was only founded in 1999. The North Star Underground Railroad Museum in Chesterfield opened in 2011.

The uncovering of a story that, as Green called it, “long buried and forgotten”, required the concentrated effort of historians like Godine. This work continues to this day.

Taking up this history and educating the public about it is another achievement. Organizations like the Adirondack Diversity Initiative have taken on this task.

And as Green wrote in the Adirondack Almanac in January, that work is far from complete.

“Although there are new and encouraging initiatives in the Adirondacks dedicated to achieving such goals, it is difficult to discern their impact on reducing racial injustice,” she wrote.

Green pointed out that many communities here are still about 95% white. (The village of Saranac Lake is 89% white, according to the 2020 census. Lake Placid is 93% white, Tupper Lake is 94%.)

“Seventy percent of the small black population of the Adirondack Mountains is imprisoned under conditions reminiscent of slavery, a system that denied millions of blacks the right to vote and exploited their labor, ensuring that many of them remained in poverty long after emancipation,” she wrote.

Green's death is an immeasurable loss to the Adirondacks, but her legacy will live on through the efforts of local civil rights activists and organizations in the name of equality and justice.

“Change is undoubtedly difficult, and even people with good intentions will have difficulty implementing it,” Green wrote in her afterword. “But it has to start somewhere.”