Dr. Alice Green’s impact on UAlbany

ALBANY, N.Y. ( NEWS10 ) — Longtime Albany civil rights activist Dr. Alice Green died on August 19. She was 84. Green touched many people and places, and one such place was the University of Albany.

Paul Grondahl, the Opalka Endowed Director of the UAlbany Writers Institute knew Green for 30 years. The former Times Union reporter even profiled her.

“She’s come here to teach classes, she’s been a featured author at our events,” said Grondahl.

Ever the advocate for criminal justice reform, Green used writing to reach out to her community.

“She started this therapeutic journaling program, that I kind of oversee, to work with at-risk and troubled teens to get them to write about their trauma and their anger, and maybe not resort to violence” Grondahl continued.

Green’s passions — writing and social justice — intertwined on the cover of her book, We Who Believe in Freedom , which displays her trying to calm a 2020 police brutality protest in Albany.

“And that’s Dr. Alice Green, in the middle of protesters, the Black Lives movement, and police in full riot gear who were about to move in and physically and aggressively clear out the protesters. And Dr. Green stood in the middle and said wait there’s a better way than resorting to violence and she calmed down the situation and eventually the protesters quietly and peacefully left their long encampment in front of the police station” Grondahl described to NEWS10’s Zion Decoteau.

Over at UAlbany’s research room, one can find archives full of Green’s writings, notably An African in The Adirondacks .

“She wrote about being one of only two black families to grow up in a small community in the Adirondacks,” said Jodi Boyle, UAlbany’s Supervisory Archivist. “This is really the nucleus of what became her memoir.”

Members of the community and UAlbany students are welcome to come in and view the university’s archives of Dr. Alice Green.

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