They rise to the top of the organized crime racket in Harlem, encountering corrupt law enforcement, con artists, and the Mafia, in a satire of both racism within the Hollywood film system, and America itself.

The film stars Philip Thomas, Charles Gordone, Barry White, and Scatman Crothers, all of whom appear in both live-action and animated sequences.

Later re-released under the titles Bustin' Out and Street Fight, Coonskin has since been re-appraised, recontextualizing the film as the condemnation of racism that the director intended, rather than a product of a racist imagination, as its detractors had claimed.

They encounter a con man named Simple Savior, a self-styled revolutionary leader who claims to be the cousin of "Black Jesus", and that he gives his disciples "the strength to kill whites".

In a stage show at his "church", Savior acts out being brutalized by symbols of black oppression—represented by images of John Wayne, Elvis Presley, and Richard Nixon, before asking his parishioners for "donations".

[4] Mannigan, while under the influence of the drug, is maneuvered into a sexual liaison with an effeminate gay man, is adorned in blackface and dressed in a mammy outfit, and finally thrown out the back of the club, where he discovers that Ruby and Bobby are dead.

The hitman waits near Rabbit's nightclub in blackface and clothing representative of minstrel show stereotypes, and a machine gun hidden in a banjo.

The main plot of the film is interspersed with animated vignettes depicting a white, blonde, large-breasted "Miss America" who personifies the United States.

[3] In 1973, production of Harlem Nights began,[2][5] with Paramount Pictures (where Bakshi once worked as the head of its cartoon studio) originally attached to distribute the film.

Roots of the Baadasssss 'Tude (Rated X by an All-Whyte Jury), Darius James writes that "Bakshi pukes the iconographic bile of a racist culture back in its stupid, bloated face, wipes his chin and smiles Dirty Harry style.

[...] He subverts the context of Hollywood's entire catalogue of racist black iconography through a series of swift cross-edits of original and appropriated footage.

Nor is it anti-Jewish, anti-Italian, or anti-American, all of whom fall prey to Bakshi's wicked caricaturist's pen as intensely as any of the blacks in his movie.

What Bakshi is against, as this film makes abundantly clear, is the cheats, the rip-off artists, the hypocrites, the phonies, the con men, and the organized criminals of this world, regardless of race, color, or creed.

[6] The film's opening credits feature a long take of Scatman Crothers performing a song on vocals and guitar called "Coonskin No More".

"[10] Darius James writes that Coonskin "reads like an Uncle Remus folktale rewritten by Chester Himes with all the Yoruba-based surrealism of Nigerian author Amos Tutuola.

[10] The film also features a pastiche of cartoonist George Herriman and columnist Don Marquis' "archy and mehitabel", in a monologue about a cockroach that leaves the woman who loves him.

Apparently some of their friends had read the script of the movie and in their belief it was detrimental to the image of blacks [...] The question-and-answer session with Bakshi that followed quickly collapsed into the chaos of a shouting match.

"[2] Animation historian Jerry Beck did not recall any disturbance during the screening, but said there were racist catcalls during the question-and-answer session, and Bakshi's talk was cut short.

The Los Angeles chapter of CORE demanded that Paramount not release the film, claiming that it was "highly objectionable to the black community.

[4] With Paramount's permission, Bakshi and Ruddy were contractually released, and the Bryanston Distributing Company was made as the new distributor for the film.

[2][4] According to a May 1975 issue of The Hollywood Reporter, Ben Gage was hired to re-record some of Barry White's voice tracks, in order to remove "racist references and vulgarity.

Its title was originally intended to break through racial stereotypes by its bluntness, but now the ads say the hero and his pals are out "to get the Man to stop calling them coonskin."

[13]In a 1982 article published in The Village Voice, Carol Cooper wrote "Coonskin was driven out of theaters by a misguided minority, most of whom had never seen the film.

[2] Richard Eder of The New York Times wrote, "[Coonskin] could be his masterpiece [...] a shattering successful effort to use an uncommon form—cartoons and live action combined—to convey the hallucinatory violence and frustration of American city life, specifically black city life [...] lyrically violent, yet in no way [does it] exploit violence.

"[2] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote "Coonskin is a flawed but fierce little work of art, at a high level of imaginative energy and with some touches of brilliance".

In September 2012, Bakshi incorporated animation from Coonskin into a new short film, Trickle Dickle Down, criticizing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.