Our Officers and Directors
(Click on names to send email)
Lamont Turner
President
Lamont Turner - Mr. Turner serves as a Director for Franklin's Charge, a nonprofit organization focused on preserving America's threatened Civil War battlefields in Williamson County, Tennessee. Mr. Turner chaired the Enslaved Memorial Marker Unveiling at Carnton Plantation in The McGavock Cemetery. Mr. Turner also serves as a Director for The Public, a nonprofit organization focused on promoting anti-racism through education, advocacy and action. Mr. Turner is the author of WINNING Beyond The Scoreboard As The U.N.D.E.R.D.O.G. The Final Score Is What Counts! Mr. Turner will be releasing a book in 2021 on how the South can heal its Civil War wound of white supremacy in 2021. Mr. Turner is a Franklin, TN native who graduated from Battle Ground Academy high school. Mr. Turner later graduated from Vanderbilt University in 3 years with a B.S. in Human Organizational Development. Mr. Turner has spent the last 20 years as a medical sales consultant. Mr. Turner wants to help Tennesseans heal by uncovering the truth about Tennessee's violent racial past.
John Ashworth - Mr. Ashworth serves as Board Chairperson of The Lynching Sites Project of Memphis, which works to identify and memorialize victims of lynching in Shelby County, Tennessee. He has also served as chairman of the Elbert Williams Memorial Committee, named for a 1940 lynching victim. Mr. Ashworth founded the Dunbar Carver Museum, which is dedicated to African-American history, and the Geneva Miller Historical Society of Brownsville, Tennessee. He is a Vietnam veteran with extensive work experience in the military and airline industry.
Margaret Haltom
Board Member
"David Alan Johnson is a second year MPP student and Pearson Fellow at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He is a native of Brownsville, TN and has lived in Northern Ireland, Germany, Rwanda, and South Africa exploring transitional justice as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow. As a fellow, he worked with survivors, ex-prisoners, museum directors, state officials, activists, and professors around truth and reconciliation, whether it be from conflict, slavery, genocide, apartheid, or dictator regimes. He conducted 40+ interviews and visited 60+ sites (memorials, museums, monuments) around each country’s past. Previously, he completed internships with Baker McKenzie’s international tax group, in the Transatlantic Leadership Initiatives Department of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, at the NAACP Headquarters as a Dubois Public Policy Fellow, and at the Nobel Peace prize-winning Grameen Bank in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He plans to pursue a career at the intersection of law and public policy addressing transitional justice in African-American communities. Johnson graduated from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, with a Bachelor of Arts in politics with a focus in global institutions and a minor in economics in 2019."
Allan Ramsaur has been an active leader in the Tennessee legal community for more than 40 years, serving both as an executive and as an active member of the Nashville, Tennessee, and American bar associations. Ramsaur earned his bachelors degree at Lambuth University and his law degree from the University of Tennessee College of Law. He began his career as legal counsel for the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Retardation. He then moved to the Tennessee Association of Legal Services (TALS) first serving as a staff attorney and later as executive director. While at TALS, among his accomplishments were the passage of a mandatory school breakfast program and the adoption of IOLTA funding for Tennessee. Mr. Ramsaur was equally successful at the Nashville Bar Association, where he increased membership by 50 percent, increased the number of CLE hours provided dramatically and almost doubled the number of pro bono cases handled by bar members. He went on to lead the Tennessee Bar Association in 1998 where he brought about growth in membership and programs, as well, helping the TBA become the largest professional organization in the state. As an active bar member, he has also served on a number of ABA committees, including the Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants and the Standing Committee on Lawyer Referral and Information Services, the Special Committee on Prepaid Legal Services and the Prepaid Institute, and Special ABA Committee on Veterans Services.
Dave Yoder - Mr. Yoder served as Executive Director of Legal Aid of East Tennessee from 1993-2015, and Executive Director of Legal Services of Northwest Indiana from 1983-1993. He holds a B.A. from Purdue University and J.D. from Valparaiso University School of Law.