President Barack Obama thanks Dr. Alice P. Green for her civil rights work as her husband Charles Touhey looks on in a White House ceremony.

Alice Green poses with her memoir, "We Who Believe in Freedom," with Paul Grondahl, who wrote the foreword, at the Albany Book Festival in 2021.

From left, Leon Van Dyke, Persell McDowell and Earl Thorpe, members of the '60s militant activism group The Brothers, join Alice Green, who joined their racial justice causes, at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party at Green's house in 2020.

Paul Grondahl congratulates authors Alice Green, left, and Frankie Bailey on being named Literary Legends by the Albany Public Library in 2018.

Organizer Mark Bobb-Semple, right, looks at a sign honoring Alice Green and her legacy during a march and candlelight vigil through Albany’s South End on Aug. 23.

Noble Applyrs looks at a candle during a vigil outside the Alice Moore Black Arts and Cultural Center on Friday to honor its founder Alice Green, the longtime social justice advocate who died on Aug. 20 at 84.

Charles Touhey shares a few memories of Alice Green, his wife of 52 years, at the conclusion of a march and candlelight vigil through Albany's South End where Green focused her social justice work.

A mourner holds a votive candle near a photo of Alice Green at the conclusion of a march and candlelight vigil in honor of the civil rights activist, who died on Aug. 20 at 84 of cardiac arrest.

Tonni Chapple during a vigil outside the Alice Moore Black Arts and Cultural Center on Friday to honor its founder Alice Green, the longtime social justice advocate who died on Aug. 20 at 84.

ALBANY —“Say her name! Alice Green!”

“Say her name! Alice Green!”

The chant reverberated off brick buildings flanking South Pearl Street as a procession of mourners—200 strong, men and women, young and old, Black and brown and white — marched northward Friday evening.

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

Our footfalls matched the incantatory rhythm of the call and response.

As dusk descended on the roadway, it felt like a kind of church, where everyone was welcome, the broken and the fallen, the faithful and heathens alike.

The fearless woman whose name we called out had summoned the better angels of our natures by welcoming home formerly incarcerated people, those struggling with substance use disorder, the unhoused, and the abject poor — anyone society chooses to marginalize.

We had come to light a candle, to say a prayer, to sing a protest song, to link arms, to shed tears, to hug old friends and to listen to articulated grief and praise for Dr. Alice Paden Green, Albany’s Mother Courage and a fearless warrior for social justice and racial equality who died of cardiac arrest on Aug. 20 at age 84 after a recent bout of COVID-19.

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

We marched across Green’s beloved South End, where she had toiled for six decades trying to bend the long arc of the moral universe toward justice. She traveled a hard road, hailing........

© Times Union