American Gangster Frank Lucas

American Gangster Frank Lucas

Devekeyan K. Lattimore

The University of South Florida

Frank Lucas was a successful black man in the world who used a drug known as cocaine another word for it is crack and the urban community to become a millionaire. There was a movie that was base on his life called American Gangster (Zaillian, 2007), which Denzel Washington played the role of him a kingpin, that empire. Could not be stop in Harlem, New York during the 1960s until the 1970s. Frank Lucas became the man that he is today because of where he came from. Lucas said one event that change his life was when he was six year old he witness the death of his 13 years old cousin who was killed but a group of the Ku Klux Klan because he was looking at white women and flirtatious way (Lucas, 2007). He was born in LaGrange, North Carolina on September 9, 1930. But he was he grew up an Greensboro, NC where he suffered from poverty and not having a father figure and his life to look up too, he was the oldest of sibling. At that time and the world it wasn't just hard for Lucas and his family but for the whole world because of the collapse of the stock market and the United States.

Which lead to the Great Depression where many American suffered from the lack of jobs and that resorted and not having money due to unemployment especially African American during that time of history and that increased the level of poverty and the United State. Lucas always felt like the pressure was on him to be the man of the house and try to find away to be the provider for his family. With all the reasonability on his shoulder he felt like he had to do something to feed his family that lead him down the road of trouble and committing crime. He started off stealing food when his was kid to help ease of the stress that his mother had from being the only provider at that time.

When Frank Lucas was a youth his first job was working at Pipeline Company but it didn't last long. Cause he got caught one night having sex with his boss daughter. And they started to fight and Lucas ended up hitting his boss across the head with pipe knocking him out cold but Lucas was not done with him the next thing he did was set his boss company building on fire. After he burn down his boss company his mother feared that he would go to jail and that is when she told him that he must leave and get out of North Carolina and then she plead for him to go to New York and stay with some of his relative. Lucas took his mother advice and flees the seen and went to Harlem, New York the summer of 1946.

His family member and other people told him when he got there to go and fine a job and try to stay out of trouble. But he didn't listen to them because he wanted more then just wealth he wanted all. Lucas said he wanted to rich like "Donald Trump rich"(Lucas, 2007). That's when Lucas started back commenting small crime like burglar that resorted to him roping people at gunpoint at local bars and stealing jewelry from stores. In 1966, Lucas showed that he wasn't taking anything from no one by shooting a person because of a dope deal that went wrong Lucas killed this men and brood daylight and front of crowed in the street of Harlem (Zaillian, 2007). That is when he caught the eye of a notorious gangster name Bumpy Johnson. Johnson was a bookkeeper of an extortion operation. At that point Johnson ran all of Harlem gambling. Johnson took Lucas and showed him the ropes eventually that lead up to Lucas become