Turner Job Corps students will vote early on Friday

ALBANY — Turner Job Corps officials will bring the facility’s Early Voting Initiative to the polls on Friday. Cornelia “Pinky” Modeste, the CEO of Modeste Foundation for a Better Tomorrow, and TJC Business Community Liaison Melvin Drake collaborated on the project for a few months to set up Friday’s initiative.

The opportunity to actually vote will be a first for many of the students, and that is not lost on Modeste. She conducted a workshop on the TJC campus about the importance of casting a vote.

“I asked all the white males over the age of 18 to stand, and there were three,” Modeste said. “About 35 other black males were in the room. I then said to them that at one point, these three white men would decide on where you lived, how much money you made, where you went to school, even about who you could marry.

“I went on to say that, at one time, only white men could vote in America. (That is) until white women and black people said enough was enough. No more. I told them about people dying, churches being bombed and other atrocities that occurred just to get the right to vote, to make a decision about how you would live. It got their attention.”

The TJC students will be at the downtown Government Center at 8:30 a.m. on Friday. TJC staff will act as chaperones, and some of them will vote alongside the students.