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26 The College of New Jersey Magazine Shirley Turner '64 New Jersey Senate Growing up poor and Black, Shirley Turner had it drilled into her head by her parents, neither of whom had made it past the eighth grade: She was going to earn a high school diploma. But along the way, she would have to outperform her classmates. "Because of my race, I had to be twice as good," Turner recalls. By the time she graduated from Dover High School, Turner had played on the basketball, softball, hockey, and rifle teams, served in student government, and was senior class president. "I was overly involved," she says, fueled by determination that powered her into and through Trenton State. There, as one of 19 Black students, "we all knew each other; we were like a support system." She held down two jobs en route to a degree in health and physical education: collecting dirty trays from the "slop chute" in the college's cafeteria and waitressing off campus on weekends. Across her more than five decades, the unmistakable through line of Turner's career has been education. Across her more than five decades, the unmistakable through line of Turner's career has been education. "Education is the great equalizer in this society," she says. "Had I not had that opportunity, I never would have achieved middle-class status." Turner worked for 44 years for Rider University as a counselor while serving as a Mercer County Commis- sioner, then a state assemblywoman, and for the past 24 years, a member of the state senate. Now vice-chair of the chamber's Education Committee, her record includes innumerable efforts to enhance schooling and skills training, end the pipeline to prison, and help the incarcerated stay out upon release by expanding their minds. "My thrust ever since I was elected to office has been to provide those kinds of opportunities to everybody, no matter what their economic status or zip code, from K to 12 and beyond," she says. "My attitude is that if I can do it, anybody can do it if they have the same opportunities I had."