How long does it take to change a person’s fate? Sometimes it only takes a moment. At least that’s what happened to Frank Lucas. Frank Lucas was born in a small town in the southern United States in 1930. According to the normal trajectory, he should be like most black Americans. Go to black schools, go to college if he studies well, and work in a manual labour job or join the army if he doesn’t study well. In short, his life will be like this. However, everything changed when he was six years old.

That year, Lucas’s cousin participated in the mayoral election. He was not in an advantageous position at first, but he was unexpectedly elected in the end. For the six-year-old Lucas, this was a great joy. There is nothing better than shouting in front of other children that my brother is the most powerful in the town. However, the United States at that time had not yet experienced “I Have a Dream”. Racial discrimination was very serious and the KKK was rampant. Just when Lucas’ family was celebrating the success of his cousin with a wine party, a group of KKK broke in. In front of the whole family, they poured gasoline on his cousin and set him on fire. The cousin was burned alive. Afterwards, no one investigated, and no one was punished. This incident had a huge impact on Frank Lucas.

Originally a kind and simple good boy, he became a revenger full of hatred and violence against white people. In the following ten years, Frank Lucas either burned white people’s mailboxes, smashed white people’s cars, and even set fire to police cars. So, when he was 16 years old, he was already a well-known villain. Then, he was seen by Elworth Raymond Johnson, a gangster who also hated white people. Johnson was not an ordinary person. He was the master of the New York underworld from the 1930s to the 1960s. The American TV series Godfather of Harlem tells his story.

Under Johnson’s support, Frank Lucas went from a driver to a middle-level cadre. However, unlike other middle-level cadres who opened underground casinos, collected protection fees, and hired killers, Frank Lucas’s business scope was drugs. Frank Lucas caught up with the good time. The entire 1960s was the explosion period of the US narcotic market. At that time, the United States had just intervened in the Vietnam War. For the benefit of capitalists, young and healthy American youths died one after another in the quagmire of Vietnam. The government wanted to expand conscription, but college students were not as easy to fool as high school students. Anti-war movements broke out in various universities. However, this anti-war movement was different from the marches with placards we know. Instead, a large group of people went to an open space to listen to concerts, drink beer, shout a few words of “make love, not war”, and then men and women fell in love with each other and went into the tent to have a good time. There was no sign of anti-war. To put it bluntly, these young people were just squandering their hormones under the banner of anti-war. Frank Lucas keenly noticed this track. He wanted to expand the market and become the drug king of New York.

But the question is, where do drugs come from? At that time, neither the Golden Crescent in the Middle East and West Asia nor the Silver Triangle in South America had developed. The largest source of drugs at that time was actually the Golden Triangle at the junction of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. Coincidentally, the Golden Triangle is very close to where the United States was fighting the Vietnam War. After Frank Lucas personally visited suppliers, the Golden Triangle became a new source of drugs for the New York drug market. Now that the source of drugs is available, how can they be transported back? There are customs, anti-smuggling, and the Coast Guard along the way. If you transport directly, there is no guarantee that the drugs will not be checked. If you bribe them, there are too many god-like good people and the cost is too high. Then, the smart Frank Lucas came up with a genius idea. Buy drugs from the Golden Triangle and use the channel in Laos to transport the drugs to Vietnam. From Laos, the drugs were transported to the US military base to Vietnam, and then a hole was dug in the bodies of the dead American soldiers and the drugs were stuffed into the dead bodies. Let the bodies of the dead soldiers become a tool for drug transportation and take the US military transport plane directly back to the country without any customs inspection. To be honest, the US drug enforcement police would never think of such an idea. Even if they thought of it, would you dare to risk desecrating the honour of soldiers and dissect and examine the bodies one by one? It was with this genius idea that Frank Lucas became the largest drug dealer in New York. After Elworth Raymond Johnson’s death, Frank Lucas naturally became the new godfather. The movie American Gangster is based on Frank Lucas.

However, there is a bug in Lucas’ plan, that is, it must be coordinated by the military. Otherwise, this job cannot be done. The person Frank Lucas bribed in the US military is called Melvin Combs. Although he is only an Air Force major, he is responsible for the entire body transportation. The two worked closely together. Make it bigger and stronger and create glory again. But unfortunately, this business cannot be done for a long time, because soldiers will retire. In 1971, Melvin Combs retired, and his utilization value was greatly reduced. However, Frank Lucas still remembered the old friendship and handed over the drug business in a district in New York to him. Melvin Combs, who was born in the military, obviously has no talent in drug trafficking. The business was shut down by the police not long after it started. Melvin Combs was also arrested. But not long after, the police inexplicably released Melvin Combs. This aroused Frank Lucas’s suspicion. You are not a water fairy who has become a policeman, right? In order to prevent his secret from being discovered by the police, Frank Lucas arranged his men to shoot Melvin Combs to death in the car on Central Park West Avenue.

You see, this is how gangsters are, they only care about interests and not loyalty. Although they worship gods to bond their brotherhood, they will even betray even gods if something really happens. However, Frank Lucas did not expect that his shot would change not only the fate of one person, but the fate of the entire country. Melvin Combs died, leaving behind a three-year-old child, Sean Combs. Yes, this is the child who later became Puff Daddy.