Storyline: A black pastor, Deke O'Malley, manages, by pretending to want to organize the "return to Africa" of black Americans, to defraud the inhabitants of Harlem, during a public subscription, eighty-seven thousand dollars. Masked white men, however, steal his proceeds and disperse into the metropolis, vainly pursued by two black policemen, Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Ligger Jones. While they begin the investigation to find both the missing Deke and the dollars, the robbers lose, without realizing it, the bale of cotton in which they had hidden the loot. Having first ended up in the hands of Uncle Budd, a ragpicker, then in those of a wholesaler and, finally, in a theatre, the bale is found by Jones and Johnson, but without the money it contained. Thinking that the "black mafia" is involved in the matter (managed, however, by a Sicilian) they force him to give them the eighty-seven thousand dollars: hidden in the bale, to lure Deke into a trap, having captured both the dishonest pastor and his perpetrators of the initial robbery (belonging to the "white mafia"). While their superiors and the population are happy for the recovery of the money, Jones and Johnson learn with great desperation that it is old Budd who has appropriated the money from the robbery and is enjoying it like a nabob.
Category
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Cortometraggi