Black groups, generally speaking, are involved in mid to lower level drug trafficking
What about Leroy Nicky Barnes, Frank Lucas, Ellsworth Johnson and Stephanie St Clair?
Where do you think Barnes, Johnson, etc. got their drug supply? The Mafia was the at the top controlling the supply. Barnes, Johnson, etc. were at the mid-level, controlling wholesale operations to lower level retail distributors.
Lucas may or may not have had a direct heroin connection, at least for a time, to Southeast Asia but I don't think that's where all his supply came from if in fact he was as big as he claimed.
It varies. The narcotics business is too large for any one group to control. By the sixties and seventies there were changes in the criminal world-a sort of perverted echo of Black power. Many Black criminals no longer saw a reason why they should constantly be in a subordinate relation to the Mafia.
Still business is business. Despite his protestations of independence, Nicky Barnes relied almost exclusively on the Mafia for supply, particularly Lucchese member (associate) Matthew Madonna. Barnes tried to become completely independent but could not get enough support from his compatriots. He had to settle for cutting slightly better deals.
On the other hand both Frank Lucas (Golden Triangle) and Frank Matthews (Cubans, Turks and Colombians) had their own suppliers and were known to not be overly fond of Italians. Matthews in particular had a dislike for the Italians. Matthews still did business with them but on terms he found better for him. When threatened with violence he responded in kind and based on his rep the Mob backed off.
Matthews became a national narcotics wholesaler and went so far as to chair a 1971 Black criminal meeting in Atlanta devoted to teaching other would-be crimelords how to get independent sources of narcotics.
