More On The Punitive Damages Front

ATTORNEY PROFILE By: Angelia Morie Nystrom

The UT Foundation Institute of Agriculture

VAN D. TURNER, JR: A LEADER WHO REMOVES OBSTACLES AND FINDS INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS

Join the KBA on October 1 for the Diversity and Inclusion CLE “Removing Obstacles” with Van Turner.

It has often been said that the best leaders are the best problem solvers. They have the patience to step back and see the problem at-hand through broadened observation—a type of “circular vision.” They see around, beneath and beyond the problem itself. The most effective leaders approach problems through a lens of opportunity and find common ground to reach a solution. They remove obstacles and find innovative solutions.

The Honorable Van Turner, Jr., Memphis attorney, Shelby County Commissioner and founder and president of Memphis Greenspace, Inc. is such a leader.

Elected to the Shelby County Commission for District 12 in 2014, Turner quickly gained a reputation as a Commissioner who could resolve seemingly intractable disputes by finding and advocating middle-ground positions. He is known as a compromiser who consistently interposes between squabbling factions and finds compromise solutions that resolve the quarrel.

In December 2016, an intervention by Turner made it possible for the Commission to approve an MWBE program requiring the county to give African American and Caucasian women special consideration to remedy what the Equal Opportunity Compliance director had determined to be discrimination in contracts and purchasing. The measure almost hit a snag when a fellow Commissioner objected that, by not specifying “all women,” the measure was actually regressive. Debate ensued. If the ordinance were amended, it would require an additional reading—meaning that the issue would have been held off until the following year.

Turner materialized with a resolution that bridged the gap between the two contending factions, leaving the existing classifications of the ordinance intact, but adding a provision that gave the EOC director free reign to apply the terms of the ordinance to other groups as she deemed appropriate. That allowed for final vote, approving the ordinance by a decisive 11-2 vote. The Commission went on to approve a companion measure applying similar remedial provisions to locally owned businesses, strengthening their potential future share of county purchases and contracts.

If there is a problem, Van Turner finds a solution.

For many years, leaders in Memphis wanted to get rid of the Confederate monuments that adorned two of their public parks. In a city where two-thirds of the citizens are African-American, the presence of monuments to J. Harvey Mathes, a Confederate war correspondent and army captain, Jefferson Davis, who led the secession of the Southern states from the United States under the auspices of state’s rights to maintain slavery, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general infamous for slaughtering black soldiers and for later co-founding the Ku Klux Klan, was both offensive and nonsensical. While the Memphis City Council had voted in 2015 to remove the statutes from Fourth Bluff Park and Health Sciences Park respectively (and the County Commission passed a resolution supporting the City Council’s initiative), they were blocked from doing so by State law. In 2017, Mayor Jim Strickland had requested permission to remove them again. The Tennessee Historical Commission rejected the request.

Mayor Strickland recognized a loophole for removal of the statutes: selling the parks to a private entity would allow the City to skirt the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, passed in 2013 and amended in 2016, which prohibits the removal, relocation or renaming of a memorial that is on public property. The City could pass an ordinance to transfer the property to a private entity, which could then effectuate the removal of the statues. However, to make the transfer, the City needed an entity to which to transfer the property.

Van Turner had heard about this through the grapevine and knew he had the solution: form a nonprofit to purchase the parks, remove the statues and then maintain the parks for the public to enjoy.

While the creation of the nonprofit would be easy, Turner knew that the controversy surrounding it could be great. As a husband and father, he had cause for concern. As a leader in the community, though, he knew that he needed to make hard decisions that could solve the issue.

Turner reached out to several influential people whose names were given to him by people concerned about the City. He says, “I talked with them and asked if they were interested. Understanding that there would be some publicity—some positive, some negative. Would they be in a position to undergo all of that with their employers, their families? Once we established that everyone knew the risks, we formed Memphis Greenspace, Inc.”

Memphis Greenspace, Inc. was created to promote parkland in Memphis so that people from all backgrounds can enjoy livable neighborhoods and share space where people of diverse backgrounds and different ages can come together for recreation, enrichment and community activities. Importantly, the organization quickly raised a quarter of a million dollars from private donors and to start the process to purchase the parks and get the statues removed.

On December 15, 2017, Memphis’s City Council voted to sell Health Science Park and Fourth Bluff Park to a private nonprofit, on the condition that they would run them and keep them public. On Wednesday, December 20, Mayor Strickland signed the contract with Memphis Greenspace, and the Council ratified it. Later that evening, at 9:01 pm in a nod to “Take ‘Em Down 901,” Memphis Greenspace lawfully removed the Forrest statue. The others soon followed.

Legal issues surrounding the transfer of the statues and the remains of Forrest and his wife were resolved earlier this year, and the bodies of Forrest and his wife will be reinterred elsewhere.

When asked about the significance, Van Turner said, “I think it removed, symbolically, a barrier that held our City back.” The removal had a more personal meaning to him, though. “My father spent the majority of his youth in LeMoyne-Owen Gardens. The family later moved to Binghampton and at one point, he lived very close to the park. He recalled as a young man not being able to walk through the park without being accompanied by a white and not being able to sit in the park. That left a really bad impression on him and countless other black youth in the community.” The statue was removed on his father’s 74 th birthday.