LaGrange’s “Country Boy”
Frank Lucas was born near LaGrange, North Carolina, in 1930. He saw his older cousin lynched by the Ku Klux Klan in 1936 for looking at a white woman walking down the street. He credited that moment with launching him into a life of crime.
Already a criminal in 1946, the sixteen-year old Lucas moved to Harlem, which he’d been told was the “promised land” for African Americans. His crime spree in New York began with thievery but soon descended into murder and drugs. In the 1960s and 1970s, Lucas “owned” his neighborhood in Harlem, buoyed by his fearlessness and by the locals’ addiction to his particular brand of heroin. A rather flamboyant gangster, his signature look was a $50,000 chinchilla coat with matching $10,000 hat.
Lucas brought five brothers into the family “business.” Calling them the “Country Boys,” he said that city boys were not reliable and that he could only trust good old country folks. First arrested in 1975, Lucas never served more than a few years behind bars, trading information for time.
On November 2, 2007, American Gangster, a film starring Denzel Washington based on the life of Frank Lucas, was released to wide acclaim. Although many details in the movie are disputed, it conveys the likable nature of the native North Carolina country boy.
