Mahalee Lucas was the mother of the renowned American drug dealer and trafficker Frank Lucas. Her husband was Fred Lucas; they had eight children together, five sons and three daughters. She lived in a neighborhood with high crime rates, and their family had financial struggles, so raising her eight children was tough.
Information on Mahalee’s education qualification is not given, but given the rate of discrimination in the early 1900s, she probably did not get a good education and hence did not work, explaining why her family faced financial struggles
Her Son
Frank Lucas was born in 1930 in a community with a high crime rate, and he was involved in petty crimes when he was young, including mugging drunkards at taverns around his neighborhood. He would use the proceeds of crime to feed his siblings.
Mahalee’s son said what motivated him to become a criminal was after witnessing his 12-year-old cousin killed by the Ku Klux Clan for looking at a white woman in a flirty way. Despite living a life of crime, Frank thought it was better to work and earn money honestly, so he started working for an employer in North Carolina.
Even though he was working, he was still involved in petty crimes, and at one point, he got into a heated argument with his employer after sleeping with his daughter. The argument got physical, and Mahalee Lucas’ son hit his employer with a pipe on the head. Frank went ahead and stole four hundred dollars from the company and set it on fire. After Mahalee Lucas heard of her son’s actions, he asked him to move to New York to evade arrest.
Mahalee’s Son’s Life in Crime
Even after moving to New York City, Frank continued with his petty crimes, and after some time, he was taken in by Bumpy Johnson, a gangster in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. He worked for Bumpy until his death in 1968 and was exposed to the drug business.
Frank thought the fastest way to become rich was to cut middlemen and deal directly with drug dealers. He traveled to Asia and later started smuggling drugs into the United States. Some said that he smuggled drugs into the US using caskets for American soldiers. After getting the drugs in the United States of America, Mahalee’s son only used his family members and close friends to sell his heroin.
In 1975, Frank was arrested and sentenced to 70 years in prison but only stayed for five years, and he was released, but then he was arrested again and sentenced to seven years in prison. His life has been depicted on media shows; for instance, American Gangster was a film depicting his life in crime.
Upon his death, Frank Lucas used a wheelchair due to a car accident. He died on May 30, 2019, aged 88, in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, USA.
Death
Mahalee Lucas died due to old age on December 18, 2003, aged 94, in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, USA, and was buried at Pinelawn Memorial Park in Kinston, Lenoir County, North Carolina, USA.
