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William Jennings "Bill" Jefferson (born March 14, 1947) is a former American politician from the U.S. state of Louisiana. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for nine terms from 1991 to 2009 as a member of the Democratic Party. He represented , which includes much of the greater New Orleans area. He was Louisiana's first black congressman since the end of Reconstruction. On November 13, 2009, Jefferson was sentenced to thirteen years in federal prison for bribery after a corruption investigation,〔(Ex-congressman gets 13 years in freezer cash case ) USA Today. 13 November 2009. Retrieved 15 May 2015.〕 the longest sentence ever handed down to a congressman for bribery or any other crime. He began serving that sentence in May 2012 at a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility in Beaumont, Texas. ==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.〔Berry, Jason. (Louisiana Purchase ). ''Washington Monthly'', April 2008.〕 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.〔(Navy League spreadsheet of military veterans in Congress. )〕 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;〔On August 21, 2009 Mose Jefferson was convicted on four felony counts ((Mose Jefferson guilty of 4 of 7 bribery charges). )〕 and of Archie Jefferson and Brenda Jefferson Foster. He is the uncle of Angela Coleman. Jefferson and his wife, Andrea Jefferson, 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「William J. Jefferson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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