He Was Killed in Federal Prison — Then Oakland Gave Him an 8-Mile Funeral

Felix Mitchell built one of the most structured heroin organizations Oakland had seen. Federal court records described a network of roughly twenty to twenty-five people, with street sellers, collectors, lookouts, communications, and money moving upward through a hierarchy that kept Mitchell far from many of the individual street transactions. By the early nineteen eighties, authorities were tying the 69 Mob to large-scale heroin sales, territorial violence, luxury cars, expensive jewelry, and a network that stretched beyond a single East Oakland housing project. After years of investigation, federal prosecutors finally convicted Mitchell of conspiracy, directing a continuing criminal enterprise, tax evasion, and related offenses. He was sentenced to life without parole. Fourteen months later, Mitchell was stabbed inside Leavenworth Federal Prison and died the next morning. The motive was never cleanly established. Then his body returned to Oakland. What followed became one of the most extraordinary funerals in the city’s street history: a horse-drawn carriage, a bronze casket, four Rolls-Royces, ten white limousines, an eight-mile procession, and thousands of people gathering along the route and at the church. This BLACK STREET POWER documentary follows the rise of Felix Mitchell and the 69 Mob, the mechanics of the organization, the Oakland drug war, the federal investigation that finally broke the system, Mitchell’s death in prison, and the funeral that turned him into an even larger symbol after he was gone. Federal prosecutors removed the man. Oakland discovered that they had not removed the symbol.