George Jefferson is a fictional character played by Sherman Hemsley on the American television sitcoms All in the Family (from 1973 until 1975) and its spin-off The Jeffersons (1975–1985), in which he serves as the program's protagonist. He is the only character to appear in all 253 episodes of The Jeffersons.
George Jefferson was born in Harlem in 1929, an ambitious African-American entrepreneur who started and managed a successful chain of seven dry cleaning stores in New York City. The only background on the Jefferson family is that they were Alabama sharecroppers. In a very early episode, George's wife Louise makes mention of a conversation she had with George's father after she and George were married about the Jeffersons family roots. However, the show's writers later applied a retroactive change in the continuity of George's father, such that he had died when George was 10 years old. This left George to take care of his mother; therefore, George was unable to complete high school. He was a cook in the US Navy during the Korean War. He began dating Louise when they were teenagers and married her upon his discharge from the navy.
George Leo "Jeff" Jefferson (August 8, 1922 – September 21, 1985) was an American baseball pitcher in the Negro Leagues. He played with the Jacksonville Red Caps in 1942 and 1943 and the Cleveland Buckeyes from 1944 to 1950. His brother, Bill Jefferson, also played negro league baseball.
George Jefferson (George Gordon Jefferson; February 28, 1910 – February 13, 1996) was an American athlete who competed mainly in the pole vault. He was born in Inglewood, California.
A student at UCLA, Jefferson competed for the United States in the 1932 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, United States in the pole vault where he won the bronze medal.