Albany

Community activist Willie White has led nearly every significant battle for racial equality and social justice in the city's South End over the past decade.

But the founder and executive director of the not-for-profit grass-roots community organization AVillage is stepping down.

"I've been working nonstop at this for a long time. I'm just really tired and needed to take a break and spend more time with my family," said White, 59, who started AVillage in 2009 with a handful of concerned South End residents. The group's mission is to improve the quality of life in the South End by making improvements and changing its narrative to one of resilience and hope.

A search is underway for White's replacement. He will be honored Feb. 28 at AVillage's sixth annual Celebration of Progress, a fundraiser held at the State Museum.

"Willie gave his all to this organization and to the South End, and we are eternally grateful for his service and happy that he is taking time to take care of himself and his family — and that he plans to stay involved in the community," board president Marva Richards wrote in a letter last week mailed to supporters of AVillage.

White's recurring pain from a previous back injury and other recent health issues contributed to his decision, Richards said.

"AVillage is totally Willie's baby, but he's been talking for the past six months about wanting to step back because he has a big extended family who needs him," said Tom McPheeters, a fellow South End activist and longtime friend. McPheeters will serve as interim executive director until a replacement is hired. "People were seeing Willie as the answer to everything and that became overwhelming."

White's leadership has left the organization — which uses office space on Morton Avenue donated by the Albany Housing Authority — in a strong position. "We have a budget of more than $150,000 a year, with part-time pay for the executive director, a committed board and wonderful staff and volunteers," McPheeters said. "Willie put us in great shape."

Perhaps the group's greatest victory came in 2011 when they finally won a new CDTA bus route from South Pearl Street up the Morton Avenue hill to Albany Medical Center, where many South Enders work. It took two decades of pleading and spirited lobbying, a win they celebrated with a street party. "It reiterates the fact that when a community comes together, the sky's the limit," White told me. He added a line that became his mantra: "The South End is on the rise again."

White and AVillage epitomize the centuries-old dynamism and melting-pot nature of South Enders, whose defiant pride was embedded in a bygone motto: "South End Against the World."

White came from Tupelo, Miss., in 1969 to live with his dad in the South End after his parents split up. His mom stayed in Tupelo. White was the 16th of her 18 children. He worked as a cook around Albany before founding AVillage. With a linebacker's build, booming laugh and a honeyed drawl, White exhibits a rare grace that allows him to break down barriers.

White gained respect from members of youth street gangs while attending vigils and calling for calm after fatal shootings. He helped found the African American Cultural Center of the Capital Region in 2012 in a former Key Bank branch at the corner of Madison Avenue and South Pearl Street. He drew all ages to demonstrations against the city's closure of the South End's Public Bath No. 2. He sweet-talked senior women and coaxed them into spending hours cooking Southern cuisine including hog chitlins and collard greens for a Mississippi Day community celebration in Lincoln Park by working right alongside them in the kitchen. He could call the mayor anytime and schedule a private meeting at City Hall. When necessary, he twisted an arm or two among politicos to get improvements for the South End.

"Nobody can replace Willie and it won't be the same without him," said Clara Phillips, a member of AVillage and neighbor of White's. She is from Waynesboro, Miss., and he enlisted her help in food preparation for Mississippi Day, a daylong down-home gathering for the past seven falls that honors Albany's deep connection to the South as a result of the Great Migration of black families in the early decades of the 20th century.

White vowed to continue to work on an ongoing project of AVillage, pressing for additional assistance for air quality monitoring and health care treatment for residents of the Ezra Prentice Homes. The federally subsidized apartments for low-income residents are located in a heavy industrial zone on South Pearl Street near the Port of Albany and a regional waste recycling center. Residents there have complained of respiratory problems, headaches and other ailments they attribute to thick diesel fumes from dozens of heavy trucks and tractor-trailers that rumble past their apartments each day, close enough to shake the walls. Residents have also protested against a large number of oil tanker train cars left en masse on nearby tracks in recent years.

The recent establishment of The South End Community Collaborative, a consortium of several groups working on neighborhood issues, is also part of White's legacy. "It takes courage, trust and a lack of ego to step away from the organization he founded," Richards said. "I think it was a very intelligent decision and it illustrates Willie's character as he continues his fight for justice."

Paul Grondahl is director of the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany and a former Times Union reporter. He can be reached at grondahlpaul@gmail.com.