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George Jefferson is a fictional character played by Sherman Hemsley in American television sitcoms All in the Family (from 1973 until 1975) and its spinoff The Jeffersons (1975-1985).

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 called Jefferson Cleaners. George was orphaned by the loss of his father when he was very young and never completed High School; he was a cook in the US Navy during the Korean War and also worked as a janitor. On All in the Family, Jefferson lived in a working-class neighborhood in the borough of Queens, next door to the Bunker family, with his wife Louise (Isabel Sanford) and son Lionel (Mike Evans). Jefferson was referred to on All in the Family before he was first seen in 1973 (on the program, the reason given for his initial non-appearance was that he refused to set foot in his bigoted neighbor Archie Bunker's home; the actual reason was that Hemsley was appearing in the Broadway musical Purlie and would not commit to starring in All in the Family until his Broadway run ended). When the spin-off series The Jeffersons began in January 1975, George and his family had moved to a luxury apartment in a high-rise building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, or as the show's theme song famously puts it, "a deluxe apartment in the sky."

Like his neighbor Archie Bunker, George Jefferson was very opinionated, prone to anger, and often misinformed. He was in fact a sort of "black Archie Bunker," and held negative stereotypes of white people. Unlike Archie Bunker, George was a bit smarter-in one episode he tells Archie about how his brother-in-law, like Archie, had fallen for a scam. On occasion in The Jeffersons, George tries to prove he's smarter than everyone else-in one farcical episode George attempts to impress new clients (a mixed-race couple) by claiming he's a great friend of the Willis family. At the end Florence and Ralph the doorman have to pretend to be the Willis family-while the Willis pretend to be Florence and Ralph. George gets the clients but also has to foot the bill to Florence/Ralph/ & Tom and Helen Willis! Also like the Bunker character, George Jefferson softened as the years went on: by the time The Jeffersons left the air in 1985, the show rarely addressed topical issues such as racism or interracial marriage and focused more on the Jeffersons' family life, and on interactions with their maid Florence (played by Marla Gibbs) and with their neighbors.

The third episode of “All in the Family” explained how George Jefferson acquired his dry-cleaning business. In that episode, Lionel (the Jefferson’s son) explains that the family had been involved in a car accident, and used the insurance money, thirty-two hundred dollars ($3,200) to start up Jefferson’s Cleaners. A Christmas flashback episode, which featured Sherman Hemsley playing Georges father, explained how he got the idea to open a dry cleaning business as child after his father tells him that dry cleaning was expensive. It also showed how he'd been involved in money-making schemes since he was little, with him working as a shoe-shine boy and paying a schoolmate to push people into mud puddles, forcing them to get their shoes shined.

Before the Jeffersons' store opening, George had worked as a janitor, and Louise as a housekeeper. The family lived in a derelict section of Harlem. After the store opening, they moved to Queens. However, as depicted in a "flashback" episode which aired during one of The Jeffersons' later seasons, their grand opening was overshadowed by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (This represented as continuity lapse, as Dr. King's assassination occurred in 1968, and the All in the Family episode in which the Jeffersons were said to have just opened a dry cleaning store aired in 1971.)

George's former profession had the effect of him calling all men who did such work as janitors. When Louise says that the building's white janitor is properly referred to as a "cleaning technician", George says "Well, whenever a man of our race has that job he is a janitor!"

George Jefferson’s chief rival was Gil Cunningham, with whom George had a considerable antagonistic relationship. Later in the series, after Gil Cunningham died, the Jefferson’s discovered that Gil never desired to be enemies with George. It was revealed that Mrs. Cunningham (Gil Cunningham’s wife, played in that episode by future L.A. Law star, Susan Ruttan) had been the puppet behind the competition all alone. Leaving George, in his will, the bowling trophy he had won against Jefferson Cleaners with a letter inside. The letter read, “she put the ‘cunning’ in Cunningham.” and Gil advised George to never trust Mrs. Cunningham.

Also, although not often talked about, he and Louise had a niece who lived in Chicago, nurse Julie Williams (Lynne Moody, who ironically played Jenny in the Jeffersons pilot episode), from the television series E/R. It was presumed that she was from Louise's side of the family, but that was not ever explored. George made a visit to Julie while buying a scarf in Chicago that Louise liked.