Frank Lucas

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Frank Lucas (born September 9, 1930[4] in La Grange, North Carolina and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina[5]) is a former heroin dealer, and organized crime boss in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was particularly known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in the Golden Triangle. Frank Lucas is popularly known for smuggling heroin using the coffins of dead American servicemen,[6] a claim his South Asian associate, Leslie "Ike" Atkinson denies. [7] He is the subject of the 2007 film American Gangster.

Contents

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* 1 Early life

* 2 Criminal career

* 3 Arrests and releases

* 4 After prison

* 5 Family

* 6 See also

* 7 References

* 8 External links

Early life

Lucas claims that the incident that sparked his motivation into the life of crime was witnessing his 12-year-old cousin's murder at the hands of the KKK, for apparently "reckless eyeballing" (looking at a Caucasian woman), in Greensboro, North Carolina.[6]. He drifted through a life of petty crime until one particular occasion when he engaged in a fight with a former employer and, on advice of his mother, fled to New York.[6] In Harlem he indulged in petty crime and pool hustling before he was taken under the wing of gangster Bumpy Johnson.[6] His connection to Bumpy has come under some doubt, however. Lucas claimed to have been Johnson's driver for 15 years, although Johnson spent just 5 years out of prison before his death in 1968. And according to Johnson's widow, much of the narrative that Lucas claims actually belonged to another young hustler named Zach Walker, who lived with Bumpy and his family and later betrayed him.[8]

Criminal career

After Johnson's death, Lucas traveled around and came to the realization that to be successful he would have to break the monopoly that the Italian mafia held in New York. Traveling to Stilwell,Oklahoma, he eventually made his way to Jack's American Star Bar, an R&R hangout for black soldiers.[6] It was here that he met former U.S. Army sergeant Leslie "Ike" Atkinson, a country boy from Goldsboro, North Carolina, who happened to be married to one of Lucas' cousins, which made him as good as family. Lucas is quoted as saying, "Ike knew everyone over there, every black guy in the Army, from the cooks on up,"[6]

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