Retired Intelligence Detective Gary Jenkins brings you the best in mob history with his unique perception of the mafia. In this episode, I explore the history of 10 Legendary Black Gangsters, highlighting key figures and organizations from the 1920s to the present day. We discuss the evolution of black organized crime in cities like New York, Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia, focusing on prominent individuals such as Nicky Barnes, Samuel Christian, Frank Matthews, and Larry Hoover. The narrative also investigates the international connections of figures like Jeff Fort, founder of Chicago’s El Rukan, and Demetrius Flanory of the Black Mafia Family (BMF). Finally, I look at the emergence of street gangs like the Crips and Bloods in South Central LA. Additionally, we touch on iconic figures like Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson and cinematic portrayals of gangster life in popular media.

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Transcript

[0:00]

Introduction to Black Gangsters

[0:00]Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, back here in the studio of Gangland Wire. As most of you know, this is Gary Jenkins, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective. And I have a story today.

[0:15]Correction on that. I have a show today that’s going to… Correction on that. I’m going to talk… Correction on that. Today, I’m going to talk about the top 10 black gangsters in all of kind of recorded history, if you will. Now, going back before the war, back in the 30s and 20s, there were black gangsters, but nobody really talked much about them. Going on up into the 40s and 50s, especially the 50s, newspapers started covering that kind of thing. And so there was quite a few pretty well-known guys that were part of their community. And they were, you know, professional criminals. They had an organization. They weren’t exactly the mafia, but they had something going on. It was all built around drugs, I believe, because that was the crime that you can make some real money at. So a big rise of this in the 60s and 70s as civil rights came in and, you know, like after the riots of 1968, There’s a huge shift in really in the black communities and in covering by the newspapers and covering black crime and by the police and their response to black crime. So let’s talk about those days, you know, New York, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia are kind of the most well-known cities when it comes to the history of black organized crime.

[1:42]There were syndicates like the council headed by Nicky Barnes in New York and Philadelphia’s Black Mafia. You may have heard of that. I think I did a show of us around the more later Black Mafia with Sean Patrick Griffin. A man named Samuel Christian led that one in Philadelphia and, you know, illegal gambling and drug drug trafficking. But they also got into fencing, you know, and in Kansas City, we had a Black Mafia or at least what we did. The newspaper’s called the Black Mafia, led by a guy named Doc Dearborn and his partner, Eugene Richardson. And then the Kelton brothers had an organization. And I remember we even stopped a kid named James Calvin Bradley who just got out of the penitentiary. He was an armed robber. And the Kelton brothers had not only a heroin organization going, they had crews of young kids that were going out robbing banks.

[2:40]

Rise of Violent Lifestyle

[2:36]And they were supporting them with cars and guns and laundering the money for them. And James Calvin Bradley, when he was arrested, he had a piece of paper in his car that had all these different rules for an organization laid out, much like the mob. And they were broken down into a couple of crews and they had leaders of those crews and they had rules about, you know, don’t snitching, don’t snitching, don’t talk to the police.

[3:05]You know keep a low profile you know drive a uh cool car uh you know dress in you know normal manner don’t don’t get too loud and too you know now it’s pan sagging back then it was uh really big bell bottoms and some things like that and so you know don’t go out too big of a fro the different rules like that in order to keep the police from paying any attention to them at all now.

[3:34]They were extremely violent because this is a violent lifestyle out here in the drug world, particularly the armed robbery world. Uh, it was really a violent lifestyle and, and some of the leaders became, you know, they kind of did away with some of their own stay under the radar rules and became flashy, especially these big guys in, in New York, like, uh, uh, Nicky Barnes, who was so well-known, and Frank Matthews. They were just so well-known. Now, Frank Matthews, let’s talk about him first. He was referred to as the Black Caesar. He also had another nickname called Pee-wee. He was probably one of the most famous black gangsters in America, mainly because the press covered him. He had a large scale of heroin and cocaine drug operations. He started in the middle 60s, 1965, and he disappeared in 1973.

[4:28]And they say, and he did have an extravagant lifestyle in his prime, you know, leather fur coats and jewelry and showing up at the big prize fighting matches. They like to show up with an entourage at a prize fighting match. And he had $20 million in savings, supposedly. You know, he was born a poor country boy, as they say, down in Durham, North Carolina, just like any other mobster you ever heard of. Left school when he was like 14 or 15 years old. Started in with a little teenage gang. He was stealing chickens down there in the country. Moved north to Philadelphia, which there was a huge move north back in the 50s and 60s by black folks. And got into the numbers because the numbers in poor neighborhoods, the numbers is a big moneymaker and the number one crime that’s going on. It’s only a crime because the government made it a crime because, you know, we have the lottery now. He then fell in with something that was already there, a guy called Major Coxon, who I don’t really know anything about. And he had this drug operation going. It was calling itself the Black Mafia by then.

[5:46]He started dealing heroin in 1965. At that time, in 1965, the American mafia, the Italian mafia, controlled the main heroin supply, like, you know, out of Turkey, out of through Montreal, maybe through Cuba at one time. Well, he got a relationship with a Cuban mafia boss, Orlando Gonzalez, gonzalez and uh he got it direct from south america through miami and then he was able to bring it up and and had his own network he had a much better you know connect the connect is the thing if you’re gonna run a cocaine and heroin business you gotta have the good connect uh gonzalez will die and and frank really like took it all over himself and and just just kept going and going and going he had two vast huge drug operations in brooklyn one was called the ponderosa the other was the okay corral corral that if you think about it the ponderosa was a rancid and um oh i can’t even think of the name of it now with hoss and little joe and paul and all them uh and uh you know gunfight at the okay corral so you know they kind of like based on those movies which were extremely popular they had a lot of westerns when i was a kid it was It was all Westerns on TV, and Western movies were really popular.

[7:11]The DEA will say that he handled…

[7:17]All the heroin in all the major cities on the East Coast.

[7:20]Got indicted in 72, charged with tax evasion and distribution of heroin. He didn’t show up in court, and nobody’s ever seen him since.

[7:31]

Frank Lucas: Harlem Crime Boss

[7:29]He’s probably dead by now. So number two, Frank Lucas. Frank Lucas became the main crime boss in Harlem, New York, in the late 60s. And he got into the heroin trafficking business at an early age. He had to deal with the Italian mafia. mafia uh he also came up from north carolina uh mainly because he was running for the law or maybe a lynching down there he didn’t know but he had to had to leave that country area and came up into the city and saw this this huge heroin business and and he actually he realized he had to break the italian mafia’s monopoly on the heroin trade in order to really make any money Otherwise, he was always going to be subservient to these mafia guys, which, you know, had this long established organization. But the Italian mafia can only establish so much in the black community because black community is, you know, pretty insular and have their own rules. And the white guys are on the outside looking in. They have to depend on the cooperation of black guys to move into that community. Now, he makes a connection with a U.S. Army sergeant named Leslie Ike Atkinson.

[8:47]Went to Bangkok and seen, you know, we had all this, all these planes going back and forth between Southeast Asia and particularly Vietnam during the time. We’re right in the middle of the Vietnam War. They figured out a way to put drugs in furniture and bring it back.

[9:06]Just crazy. You know, they made about, I don’t know, 50, $60 million. He bought property, had expensive cars and clothes and several homes. He gets indicted in 1976.

[9:19]He gets 70 years. He eventually goes in witness protection, testifies against some mob guys. And, you know, if you think about it, if you realize this,