This first appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of Adirondack Explorer magazine. Click here to subscribe.

In early August, I was invited to a conversation about reparations in Essex organized by Alice Green and her husband Charles Touhey. I was unable to attend. A few weeks later Alice died.

I regret missing the event. I lost someone I always looked up to from afar. I won’t forget her mission.

I knew Alice Green’s work. She founded and ran the Center for Law and Justice in Albany, where I live, and received a doctorate in criminal justice at UAlbany, where I went to school, to propel her work in social justice. 

I always wanted to meet Alice. We shared a commitment of advocating for civil rights and prison abolition. Since her death, I immersed myself in her writing and recorded interviews.

I relate to her experience growing up Black in a majority white place. I cried a lot reading about the otherness she felt. The shared suffering, while debilitating, inflamed our passions for equality and systemic change. 

The personal cost of being an outsider

Alice Green was born in Greenville, S.C. in 1940. Escaping the Jim Crow South, her father sought economic opportunity in the Adirondack iron ore industry. Alice’s family settled six miles from Port Henry in the town of Witherbee. Some Black families lived in Port Henry; hers was the only one in Witherbee. 

Alice excelled in school. However, she was socially marginalized by her peers. She was president of the drama club but was not allowed to act in any performances. Her peers believed it was absurd for a Black person to play a white role. 

She relates in her writings that her brother was voted prom king, but he went dateless. No white girl would go with him. Alice’s classmates made fun of her and her sister’s hair and skin color. The use of the N-word was rampant. All her peers were European. Although they came from different ethnic groups, most were Catholic and they shared the socially constructed “superior” physical characteristics: White skin, straight hair, ponytails that moved. Her peers could blend in, assimilate by virtue of appearances. Her family could not. 

Alice did have allies and best friends in Witherbee, specifically two twins who lived next door. She had teachers that saw her obvious struggles and in turn provided compassion and support. 

When Alice was 15, she and her best friend, Myrtle, went to work as maids in Paradox Lake for the summer at a vacation resort owned by a white Southern family. 

They were so excited. When they arrived, the owner of the resort showed the girls to their quarters. Myrtle, who was white was allowed to stay in the main house. Alice was designated to a barn with the other Black workers. After spending the night weeping, Alice marched up to the owner and demanded to share the room with Myrtle. Myrtle advocated as well. The owner refused. The girls quit and returned to Witherbee. 

RELATED READING: Alice Paden Green’s civil rights vision guides new generation of activists

Alice wrote about how these experiences affected the way she saw herself, and how that pain persisted for a lifetime. I know how it feels to think that you are less than. I know the task of reclaiming your humanity when others do not see it.

In her memoir, “Outsider: Stories of Growing Up Black in the Adirondacks,” she wrote: “I bought into the myth which damaged my ego and allowed me to swallow the white supremacy narrative, which has taken years to overcome. Unfortunately, it has never totally disappeared, but I continue to destroy the myth that shaped how I thought about myself and white people.” 

From Witherbee to Albany: A lifetime fighting segregation

Alice committed to ensuring that people who lived in the Adirondacks understood that racism is a central aspect of all our lives. Starting in 2022, when she was the age of my Cuban grandmother, she hosted her first “Gathering” in Essex. 

She set an environment to facilitate an open and honest conversation with a diverse group of people: her white classmates from Witherbee, and both white and Black Adirondack Park residents. Her goal was to make sure people of color do not suffer like her family did.

She knew that an inclusive Adirondacks must go beyond welcoming people of color on bus trips. She knew that the park’s communities need to be ready to receive Blacks by believing the reality of Black humanity. 

I spoke to Alice’s husband about her life and work in the Adirondacks. He wishes to continue the “Gatherings” to make the Adirondacks an all-around welcoming place.

Building bridges through uncomfortable conversations

I experienced similar racism in my youth: white girls not allowed to date Black guys; white peers not allowed to play with me. I was picked on about my hair and grew insecure about it.

The racism I experience in the Adirondack Park—such as people questioning my ability to handle hikes—is not the same as Alice’s, but I do not live there. My cousin lives in Plattsburgh. Albeit outside of the park, the racial discrimination he tells me he experiences there scares me.

Same with Chef Darrell, who owns a diner in Blue Mountain Lake and feels overcharged by contractors. I often hear the voices of people like me, outsiders who recreate or have second homes in the park. We know it’s necessary for the region to truly let us in.

What about the Black people who are born, bred or live full-time in the park like Alice? They are the ones who are dealing with these issues in their hometowns. Alice worked to lift diverse Adirondack voices in the community they live in with the community they live with.

In a very divisive world, I am empowered by Alice’s courage to bring people together to have localized race-based conversations and to speak truth to power across racial lines, despite discomfort, to foster equality.