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Interviewer
Max Krochmal
Contributor
Rafael Delgadillo
Date of Interview
2025
Publication Date
1-14-2026
Narrator Birth Year
1965
Description
Valerie Jefferson was born in Chicago in 1965 and raised in Magnolia, Mississippi. She earned a degree in elementary education from Alcorn University. After finding that teaching did not pay enough, she moved to New Orleans and was hired as a bus operator for the RTA in 1993. Her experience being fired and subsequently reinstated with the union's help spurred her deep involvement in ATU Local 1560. She held various roles, including shop steward and vice president, before being elected as the local's first female president in 2019. Beyond her union work, Ms. Jefferson served as the labor chair for the New Orleans branch and the Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP. She was also an active member of the ATU International Black Caucus, the ATU International Women's Caucus, and community organizations like Step Up Louisiana.
Disciplines
Oral History
Geographic Coverage
New Orleans, LA
Time Periods
1990s to present
Duration
1:33:15
File Size
3.28 GB
Format
mp4
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Jefferson, Valerie and Krochmal, Max, "Oral History Interview with Valerie Jefferson" (2026). Economic Justice Research Lab Oral History Project. 38.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/ejrloh/38
Comments
The included description and attached summary and transcript files were created by rev.com and are unedited--do not quote. Please use transcript as an index only and quote directly from the video.