Before Dr. Alice Green was on the front lines fighting for social justice, she was a young girl from Witherbee, a small mining town in the Adirondacks. Her father fled from the segregated South only to face similar hardships up north.

“I made a pact with myself at that young age, saying that I will never allow white people to make me feel that way again,” said Dr. Green.

At age 15, Green got a summer job working at a restaurant. It was her first time away from home, and she was looking forward to rooming with her friend who was white.

While her friend was offered a cozy room indoors, Green said she was told she had to sleep in the barn with the other Black staff.

Despite needing the money to help support her family, she valued her dignity more. So Green said she quit her job, walked the 40 miles home and never looked back.

“Seeing what racism was like certainly hit me real hard,” she said, “and it guides me in terms of what I do, what I have to do.”

Green went on to lead a career of effecting change and policy. In 1985, she founded Albany’s Center for Law and Justice.

“I believe we change through people power, so people listen to us now, and wow, that has meant a lot,” said Green.

For more than 30 years, the center has advocated for communities of color, providing legal guidance and education on civil and criminal justice issues. The center was created in the wake of the 1984 shooting of Jessie Davis.

“The police killed a young Black mentally handicapped man. It was so outrageous; people were so upset about another killing in the city of Albany by police officers,” said Green.

In 1981, Dr. Green served as the Legislative Director for the New York Civil Liberties Union. Five years later, she was appointed as deputy commissioner for the state Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives.

“We talked about how Obamacare would affect those in prison, and I ended up getting five invitations to the White House because of it,” she said.

But it was work on a local level that she’s most proud of, including founding the African American Cultural Center, lecturing at universities and putting pen to paper to publish Albany’s longest running Black newspaper, the South End Scene.

“We published the South End Scene so people felt like they were part of a community and get information other than them getting arrested. We wanted more than that,” Dr. Green said.

Green says the most challenging moment of her activism career was when she was arrested in 1999 while silently protesting during a speech by former New York Governor George Pataki.

“When I was arrested and carried out of Empire State Plaza, it was very demeaning,” she said. “It's always a struggle for Black women to be seen as capable.”