William J. Jefferson - Early Life and Family

Early Life and Family

Jefferson was born in Lake Providence, the parish seat of East Carroll Parish in far northeastern Louisiana, where he and his eight brothers and sisters worked alongside their father – a farmer and a heavy-equipment operator for the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The Jeffersons were among the few African-American families in the area who actually owned their land (as opposed to sharecropping), which gave them a certain degree of respectability in the community. Nonetheless, he grew up in an environment of poverty.

Although neither of his parents had graduated from high school, Jefferson graduated in 1965 from the historically black G. W. Griffin High School in Lake Providence. In 1969, Jefferson received a bachelor's degree from historically black Southern University in Baton Rouge, where he had participated in Army ROTC; in 1969 he led a protest against substandard campus facilities and negotiated a resolution of the complaint with then-Governor John J. McKeithen. On graduation from Southern University he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army and served in a reserve capacity until 1975. In 1972, he earned a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. In 1996, he received a LLM in taxation from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. In 1972 and 1973 Jefferson began the practice of law, having initially served as a clerk for Judge Alvin Benjamin Rubin of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Jefferson is the brother of New Orleans assessor Betty Jefferson, a Democratic field operative; convicted felon Mose Jefferson; and of Archie Jefferson and Brenda Jefferson Foster. He is the uncle of Angela Coleman.

Jefferson and his wife, Andrea Jefferson, together they have five daughters: Jamila Jefferson-Jones, Jalila Jefferson-Bullock (a former Louisiana State Representative), Jelani Jefferson Exum (a professor of law at the University of Toledo), Nailah Jefferson (a documentary filmmaker), and Akilah Jefferson. Jamila, Jalila, and Jelani are all graduates of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Nailah is a graduate of Boston University and Emerson College. Akilah, a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, attends the Tulane University School of Medicine.