A three-sport standout at Ottawa Hills High School, "Bernie" Jefferson went on to become a star running back at Northwestern University.
He was the youngest of three sons of a Pullman porter (Bernie, Carter and Harold), born in Grand Rapids in 1918, and at Northwestern helped the Wildcats football team win the Big Ten Conference title in 1936. He was one of the first African American students to live on the Northwestern campus, and among several African American collegiate stars passed over by the NFL.
He helped found a semi-professional team called the Chicago Brown Bombers and also played for the Chicago Rockets.
When World War II broke out, Jefferson enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He flew more than 100 missions over Europe with the 332nd Fighter Group, famously known as the Tuskegee Airmen, and earned a Distinguished Flying Cross for eliminating two German radar posts in southern France in August of 1944. He was also awarded the Bronze Star.
? After the war Jefferson earned a master’s degree in education and had a 35-year career as a teacher and administrator in the Chicago Public Schools. He died in 1991 at the age of 73 in Scottsdale, Ariz.