Jackson Free Press

Cornelius "C" Turner adds another honor to his accomplishments. Last week, Gov. Haley Barbour honored Turner and 10 other people with the Mississippi Medal of Service for significant contributions to improve their communities and state.

In 1963, Cornelius Turner established Major Associates Inc. and built the company into one of the leading minority-owned construction firms in the South. Turner was one of the first African American contractors in Mississippi to become bonded.

Throughout Turner's 48 years in construction, he has renovated, constructed and subcontracted on a variety of commercial and residential facilities. He has been the general contractor for more than 600 multi-family housing units totaling more than $11 million. He was part of a joint venture on such projects as the Jackson-Hinds Youth Detention Center, a $9 million project; the Capital City Convention Center, a $52 million project; and the Bennie G. Thompson Academic Center at Tougaloo College, a $7 million project.

Turner, who once shared an office with a young Medgar Evers, co-founded the Mississippi Free Press newspaper. Turner is actively involved in the Jackson metro area. He was a founding member of Jackson 2000 and a commissioner on the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority. He has served on the board of the Mississippi Literacy Foundation, the Children's Scholarship Foundation, Jackson State University School of Business Advisory Board, the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation and Downtown Jackson Partners.

Turner has received the Leadership Award in recognition of outstanding leadership as chairman of the board of commissioners for the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority from 1993 to 1995. He was recognized by the Metro Economic Development Alliance in 1996 for his leadership and commitment to the metro area's economic development efforts. In 2003, Turner received the Friendship Award in recognition of his hard work bringing his community closer together. In 2008, he received the Mississippi Majesty Award, celebrating African American living legends. Due to Turner's leadership and direction, Major Associates has received the Diamond Award for work performed on the U.S. Postal Service Mail Facility and was recognized as an Outstanding Small Business by the Metro Jackson Chamber of Commerce.

Born in Edwards, Mississippi in 1927, Cornelius Turner is one of 12 children born on a farm owned by his parents.

At the age of 15, Turner and his siblings moved to San Pedro, Calif., where he continued his education. He joined the Merchant Marines and traveled the world. He and his wife returned to Mississippi after the birth of their first child.

Turner befriended a young Medgar Evers, whom he shared an office with, and he began to embrace the ideology of transforming Mississippi's insidious segregation laws. Turner and Evers, with the help of others, founded the Mississippi Free Press as a mechanism to share with other African Americans the activities revolving around the NAACP and other civil rights organizations that were focusing on tearing down the walls of Jim Crow.

Turner then committed to challenging Jim Crow from a business perspective. He formed a general contracting company called Major Associates in an effort to become the largest Black contractor in the South. Today, Major Associates is one of the largest African American-owned construction companies in Mississippi. Separate from building numerous housing developments, public and private sector dwellings, Major Associates via a joint venture with Fountain Construction, is the contractor for the multimillion dollar Capitol City Convention City scheduled to open in Downtown Jackson in 2009.

Other Medal of Service honorees are U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, Mississippi House Speaker Billy McCoy, former Mississippi Court of Appeals Justice Mary Libby Payne, former Mississippi Supreme Court Justices Reuben Anderson and Ed Pittman, University of Southern Mississippi President Emeritus Aubrey Lucas, University of Mississippi Chancellor Emeritus Robert Khayat, former Mississippi Board of Education Chairwoman Lucimarian Roberts, Jackson businessman Jim Barksdale and blues legend B.B. King.