The Real 'Nicky Barnes' Was the Most Dangerous Kingpin Behind 'American Gangster' Movie

In June 2012, a seventy-eight-year-old man died of cancer in a town whose name is a government secret — and for seven years, the world went on believing Nicky Barnes was still alive. American Gangster gave the crown of 1970s Harlem to Frank Lucas and left Barnes a few scenes in a fur coat, but the government's own files ranked the fur coat first: the man whose empire required the first anonymous jury in federal history and a direct order from the President to bring down. This is how a homeless Harlem addict walked out of prison carrying the Mafia's own playbook, built a seven-man Council engineered to survive anything, and dared the law to touch him on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. Then his brothers buried him alive, his protégé took his woman — and the king decided that if the oath was dead, the whole temple would burn with it.