Television
Frank Lucas, the Real Life 'American Gangster,' Shares His Story for the First Time Ever
By BET Networks
Oct 18, 2007, 16:05

In the late '60s and early '70s, Frank Lucas was the king of the Harlem drug scene. He was also one of the toughest, dangerous and most unforgiving criminals in the country before he was caught. The real Frank Lucas -- whose rise and fall is chronicled in the Universal feature film "American Gangster" starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe -- retraces his early childhood, the turns of events that led to his life of crime, his criminal past on the streets of Harlem and his reign for the first time with BET on this season of AMERICAN GANGSTER. This episode of BET's critically acclaimed series premieres Wednesday, October 31 at 10PM*.

"I wanted to be rich. I wanted to be Donald Trump rich," Lucas, 75, said during an interview for the episode. "And so help me God, I made it."

He sure did. It is estimated that Lucas made up to $1 million a day selling heroin that he shipped over from Southeast Asia in the coffins of dead soldiers during the Vietnam War. But while he was becoming a multi-millionaire, his drug of choice was devastating Harlem's community and the families in it. And according to sources also interviewed for the episode, the CIA knew all about his shipments and even made it possible for Lucas to bring the dope to America. Lucas was such an astute businessman that he even had the mob, the Sicilians and Mexicans as clients. Everybody wanted what Lucas was peddling.

"Frank is very charming, very humble and he'll have you working for him by the end of the day. He's a force of nature," Denzel Washington said in a recent interview promoting the film. Washington portrays the gangster in the film due out on Friday, November 2.

In 1975, Lucas was convicted on both federal and state drug charges and sentenced to 70 years in prison. The next year he cooperated with law officials and named names, which led to the convictions of more than 100 other drug lords and Lucas' release from jail in 1981. Two years later he was arrested again for drug trafficking and in 1984, was convicted of those charges, spending another seven years in jail.

Apart from his criminal past, this episode delves into Lucas' formative years and uncovers the experiences that would eventually define the man as an adult. Illiterate, Lucas was very affected by the racism he experienced growing up on a farm in North Carolina. He arrived in Harlem in the '40s and immediately began "taking" what he wanted. He stole, hustled and essentially outsmarted everyone around him. Soon after he arrived, Lucas was mentored for 15 years by one of Harlem's most notorious criminals, "Bumpy" Johnson. When Johnson was killed, Lucas became "the man" and Harlem would never be the same.

Called "sober, intelligent and appropriately judgmental," by Newsday, "a savvy push into more challenging territory" by Variety, and " ... .a public service" by the New York Daily News, BET's AMERICAN GANGSTER explores the rise and subsequent fall of some of the country's most notorious African American criminals of all time and the impact these crimes had on the communities in which they were committed. Narrated by Ving Rhames, each episode of AMERICAN GANGSTER creates a provocative and alternative view of Black America through these criminals' eyes.