Jemeker Thompson

Jemeker Thompson-Hairston is an American former drug dealer who rose to the top of the cocaine trade during the peak of the 1980s crack epidemic in the United States. She was based in "South Central" Los Angeles and had cocaine distributors in multiple US cities working for her.

Biography When Thompson was 8 years old, she and her mother were evicted from their apartment in South Los Angeles (formerly known as South Central Los Angeles), and their belongings were strewn outside. In the Netflix documentary episode about her life as a drug dealer, Thompson states that "I knew then that I wanted money and that I wanted to control everything." She ran track in high school and was the girlfriend of Anthony "Daff" Mosley. Daff was dealing marijuana and Thompson began collecting payments for him. Drug Enforcement Administration agents, who had been watching Thompson, thought she would stop drug dealing. In 1984, she began to grow her business again by recruiting distributors around the U.S. and for some time began getting the cocaine directly from producers in Colombia. At age 26, she opened a hair distribution business (of wigs and hair extensions), which Thompson said was a legitimate business but authorities said was used for laundering drug profits.

Memoir The crack epidemic in the U.S. was a time during the 1980s when people were using crack cocaine as payment for every day goods, crack cocaine was cheap. In a mixed review, Kirkus Reviews said that it "lacks the salacious elements that make criminal memoirs compelling," but noted that it "may appeal to believers" due to its religious content. On July 10, 2018, Netflix aired an episode featuring Thompson's story. In the documentary she talked about making millions in the drug trade, her time in prison, converting to Christianity and doing Christian ministry since her release from prison.

Gangsters: America's Most Evil Thompson was the subject of the 8th episode of the first season of Gangsters: America's Most Evil. A&E aired the episode on September 12, 2012, which documented that Thompson was one of the top contributors to the 1980s crack epidemic in the United States.

Christian ministry Thompson's change from drug dealer to evangelist was featured on The 700 Club, a program on the Christian Broadcasting Network.