Directed and written by Ossie Davis, based on the book by Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem is an early blaxploitation film. It starts big and bold, as Deke “Reverend” O’Malley (Calvin Lockhart) is raising money for a ship to sail black people back to Africa when armed and masked men attack, stealing the cash. This brings on detectives “Gravedigger” Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) and Ed “Coffin Ed” Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques) — who were in nine of Himes’ The Harlem Detective books — on the case. They see through O’Malley and despite their Nixon-respecting boss telling them to leave him alone, they do anything but.

His mistress, Iris Brown (Judy Pace), is being tracked by them and narrowly escapes them, only to find O’Malley in bed with Mabel (Emily Yancy), the wife of one of the men killed just hours ago in the robbery. The truth is that the preacher is working with white criminal Calhoun (J.D. Cannon) and the robbery was all a scam. The money is now in a bale of hay that’s been taken by scrap dealer Uncle Budd (Redd Foxx, always a junkman).  By the end, the bad guys get exposed and Uncle Budd makes his way to Ghana, where all that cash buys him a harem.

Davis didn’t make the sequel because of disagreements with the studio. That’s why Mark Warren made Come Back, Charleston Blue, a movie loosely based on Himes’ The Heat’s On.

A film made with the protection of John Shabazz and the Black Citizen Patrol, and one that pushes that self-determinism and the ghetto policing itself are the only ways out, was a volatile mix. It would be now, much less back in 1970.

You can watch this on Tubi.