Memphis Building & Construction
Trades Council
Powering · Labor Education
THE SOUTH GOT SOMETHING TO SAY
Educate · Organize · Mobilize · #LaborEducation
Sedrick Turner
President & Owner-Operator · Global Midsouth Corp.
A Memphis entrepreneur who built a multi-unit franchise business from the counter up — and then turned around and gave it back to the schools in his own city. He adopts Memphis-Shelby County schools, feeds students and staff, and stands in front of classrooms telling kids what ownership looks like. He is also a personal friend from the Tennessee State University Aristocrat of Bands, and he has carried the TSU motto, Think, Work, Serve!, ever since.
The Aristocrat of Bands
“I met Dr. Roderick Richmond and Sedrick Turner in the fall of 1991, in the Tennessee State University Aristocrat of Bands. We were young men in the same band family, learning the same lesson at the same time: you earn your place by showing up, doing the work, and carrying your section.
Tennessee State's motto is Think, Work, Serve! — and these two have carried it ever since. One of them runs a school district for Memphis children. The other builds businesses and gives it right back to those same children. Think. Work. Serve. They are my personal friends, and they are friends of this movement.”
— Kevin Bradshaw, President, Memphis CLC · Founder of Labor Education
His brother from the same band line: Dr. Roderick Richmond — Champion for Children
Sedrick Turner (left) and Dr. Roderick Richmond (right) in Memphis — Turner in his Checkers shirt, Richmond in a suit, both of them still working the same city.
Thirty-plus years after the Aristocrat of Bands, they are still in the same work: one of them runs the school district, the other feeds and funds the schools inside it. Think, Work, Serve.
Memphis NAACP Youth Council“Honoring The Men Who Lead”Presented with Gratitude to Sedrick Turner for being a guiding light and a positive example to our youth. Your leadership has paved the way for the next generation.
2025
That is the citation, word for word — and the young people handed it to him in the hall of Teamsters Local 667, under the horses and the wheel.
That room is not an accident. A business owner who feeds Memphis schoolchildren, being honored by Memphis young people, standing in a Memphis union hall — that is the whole argument this site makes, in one photograph.
Citation transcribed from the plaque presented to him in 2025.
These are the partnerships he has documented publicly himself. Send us more and we will add them.
Global Midsouth Corp. is Turner's Memphis-headquartered operating company, founded in 2009. Through it he has run multiple franchise concepts over the years — Subway, Red Robin and a wing brand of his own — and his current growth is in Checkers and Rally's locations across the Mid-South.
That matters to working people for a plain reason: these are local jobs, held by Memphians, in buildings a Memphis owner answers for. When the owner lives here, the payroll stays here and the giving stays here too.
Global Midsouth Corp. does not publish a standalone public website; the links below are the verifiable public sources on the company and its president.
Turner outside one of his Checkers locations — the storefront behind the giving.
- 2009Global Midsouth Corp. founded in MemphisTurner is President and owner-operator of Global Midsouth Corp., the Memphis-based company he has run since 2009.
- The family tradeFollowing his family's entrepreneurial footstepsHe came up in a family of operators and built his own book of business from the ground floor of the restaurant industry — the story Franchising.com told as “Team Turner.”
- Multi-unitSubway, Red Robin, and his own Hot Wings brandOver the years he has operated multiple franchise concepts and launched a brand of his own — learning each system from the counter up.
- Growing nowExpanding Checkers & Rally's across the Mid-SouthHis current growth is in Checkers and Rally's locations across the region, including Mississippi.
Have a news segment or an award write-up we are missing? Send the link and it goes on this page.
A Friend of the Movement
Working people need employers who stay, hire here and give here — and young people need to see that ownership is possible for them. Sedrick Turner does both. He built a business in Memphis and spends his own time and money on Memphis children. That is Think, Work, Serve in practice, and it makes him a friend of this movement.
Sources: Franchising.com “Team Turner,” Global Midsouth Corp. and Sedrick Turner's own public professional profiles and school-partnership posts, and Communities In Schools of Memphis. Personal recollection of the 1991 Aristocrat of Bands is Kevin Bradshaw's own.
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