Melvin "Big Smoke" Harris (16 March 1954 – 7 November 1992) was an African-American drug lord who ran an extensive crack empire that took control of Los Angeles in 1992 with the help of the Ballas and Vagos gangs and the corrupt C.R.A.S.H. police unit. He betrayed his Grove Street Families gang in order to take control of the drug trade, leading to his murder in 1992 at the hands of Carl Johnson, the GSF's second-in-command.
Biography[]
A statue of Big Smoke at his crack palace
Melvin Harris was from Compton, California in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. He was raised on Grove Street, and he became one of the founding members of the Grove Street Families gang alongside Sweet Johnson, Carl Johnson, and Ryder Wilson. Harris had a religious upbringing, and he often quoted the Bible, even during his gang years. In 1987, "Big Smoke" Harris became the second-in-command of the GSF after Carl Johnson left for New York City after his brother Brian's death, and he argued with Sweet Johnson over the drug trade. Big Smoke saw the crack cocaine trade as a lucrative business, while Johnson was opposed to the trade on moral grounds. Big Smoke moved out of Grove Street to an apartment in Inglewood and arranged for a drive-by shooting at the Johnson house in an assassination attempt on Sweet, but the shooting instead killed his mother Beverly. Big Smoke decided to work together with the Ballas dope pushers and the corrupt C.R.A.S.H. police unit to take over the city, and Sweet Johnson was arrested and Carl forced into exile as Ryder sided with Big Smoke. CJ disrupted his convoys of drug shipments to San Francisco from exile in the woods, but Big Smoke became very rich from the crack trade, and he became the manager of rapper OG Loc and the owner of a crack palace.
Death[]
Big Smoke dying next to Carl
In October 1992, Sweet and CJ returned to Compton to lead the GSF back to power, and the Grove Street Families retook Compton and nearby neighborhoods. During the Los Angeles Riots, CJ attacked Big Smoke's mansion, which was protected by his business partners from the Russian Mafia, the Vagos, the Rifa, and the Ballas, and Big Smoke was encountered by CJ as he played video games on the fifth floor of the crack den. Big Smoke decided to engage in a gunfight with Carl, but his bulletproof vest did not help him, and he was riddled with bullets. His last words to CJ were claims that everybody would remember his name once he was gone, and he died on the floor of his crack palace.