Their fathers were the biggest drug dealers in the Nation and they also were rivals in Harlem’s deadly heroin trade 30 years ago, but the daughters of Frank Lucas and Leroy “Nicky” Barnes joined forces to support other children who may have grown up witnessing heavy crime. New York Post reported that Francine Lucas-Sinclair (pictured above)is planning a program to mentor and support children of parents who have been imprisoned. Ironically, Nicole and Ebony Barnes have volunteered to provide assistance. Their mothers as well as their fathers were in and out of prison all of their lives. Francine Lucas was raised by grandparents;  Nicole and Ebony Barnes were placed in foster care. “Yes, their parents might have broken the law, but the children deserve help and support,” Lucas-Sinclair said of the kids she wants to help. “First, because they’re innocent and they can’t fend for themselves. And second, they will be your children’s spouses, their neighbors or, God forbid, the person carjacking you 10 years from now.”      

Lucas-Sinclair has a degree in public relations and lives outside Atlanta with her husband, a computer database manager, and their two children. The film “American Gangster” about her father called attention to her website, www.yellowbrickroads.org, which lists resources that are already available for the children of inmates.      

During the publicity surrounding the release of “American Gangster,” Nicole Barnes’s did an online search of Frank Lucas to find out more about her father’s rival and stumbled across a Glamour magazine article about Lucas-Sinclair’s life and her project.  “I was searching the Internet about Frank Lucas, not knowing he even had a daughter,” Nicole Barnes recalled. “I felt really compelled to contact her. It was the first time I had read anything that sounded so familiar to my childhood.”  “I think our father felt it was something we felt we needed to do,” Ebony Barnes said. “He trusted our decision. He didn’t think of it as his daughters contacting the daughter of his rival.”