He has claimed that the one incident that sparked his life of crime was witnessing the murder of his cousin.
Lucas spent much of his early youth looking after his younger siblings and getting into trouble. Many Americans in the rural South were poor at this time, but most African Americans suffered the deepest poverty. Lucas grew up in rural North Carolina during the depths of the Great Depression. As with many larger-than-life personalities, the biography of Frank Lucas is shrouded in fact, mystery and myth, much of which has been perpetuated by Lucas himself. Early Lifeīorn September 9, 1930, in La Grange, North Carolina, Frank Lucas was a country boy who grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. Lucas had millions in cash and property in several cities when he was busted in 1975. Killings, extortion, and bribery were his modus operandi.
By the 1960s, he had constructed an international drug empire that spanned from New York to South East Asia. Born September 9, 1930, in La Grange, North Carolina, Frank Lucas moved to Harlem in 1946 where he entered the world of street crime.