Jacqueline (Jacqui) Theresa Michot Ceballos was born September 8, 1925 in Mamou, Louisiana to parents Louis Michot and Adele Domas. She was the middle of seven children; her brother Louis J. Michot ended up becoming State Representative and State Superintendent of Education (see Collection 305). The family moved to Lafayette when Ms. Ceballos was 8 years old, and she graduated from Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) with a degree in music. While at SLI, she took sociology courses from Dr. Benjamin Kaplan (see Collection 78), who became a lifelong influence on her desire for social change and activism.

Planning a career in opera, she moved to New York City, where she met and married Alvaro Ceballos, a Colombian businessman. The couple had two sons and two daughters. The family moved to Bogotá, Colombia, where Ceballos founded El Teatro Experimental de la Opera. While an incredible experience, the theater sparked tension between her and her husband, who then left her for a while. After reading “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan, Ceballos’s attitude on society changed. She and her children moved back to New York City, and in 1967, she attended her first National Organization for Women (NOW) meeting. She eventually became president of the New York chapter of NOW and later founded the Veteran Feminists of America (VFA). VFA’s mission is to promote education on second-wave feminism by bringing together and preserving the histories of its leaders.

Ms. Ceballos also acted as a representative at the United Nations International Women’s Conference, an associate of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press, and a participant on a panel alongside such feminists as Germaine Greer, Diana Trilling, and Jill Johnston in a town hall debate with Norman Mailer about the women’s liberation movement. This debate was memorably documented in the film "Town Bloody Hall" by the well-renowned documentarian D.A. Pennebaker.