Dream Factories and Radio Pictures by Howard Waldrop

and disorderly.
    1920
    C APTAIN TEEHEEZAL TURNED HIS MODEL T across the oncoming traffic at the corner of Conklin and Arbuckle. He ignored the horns and sound of brakes and pulled into his parking place in front of the station house.
    A shadow swept across the hood of his car, then another. He looked up and out. Two condors flew against the pink southwest sky where the orange ball of the sun was ready to set.
    Sgt. Fatty was just coming into view down the street, carrying his big supper basket, ready to take over the night shift.
    Captain Teeheezal had been at a meeting with the new mayor about all the changes that were coming when Wilcox was incorporated as a city.
    Sgt. Hank came running out, waving a telegram. “This just came for you.”
    Teeheezal tore open the Western Union envelope.

    TO: ALL POLICE DEPARTMENTS, ALL CITIES, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FROM: OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
    1. VOLSTEAD ACT (PROHIBITION) IS NOW LAW STOP ALL POLICE DEPARTMENTS EXPECTED TO ENFORCE COMPLIANCE STOP
2. ROUND UP ALL THE REDS STOP
    PALMER
    Teeheezal and the sergeant raced to punch the big red button on the sergeant’s desk near the three phones. Bells went off in the squad room in the tower atop the station. Sgt. Fatty’s lunch basket was on the sidewalk out front when they got back outside. He reappeared from around back, driving the black box of a truck marked Police Patrol , driving with one hand. And cranking the hand siren with the other, until Sgt. Hank jumped in beside him and began working the siren on the passenger side.
    Patrolmen came from everywhere, the squad room, the garage, running down the streets, their nightsticks in their hands—Al, Mack, Buster, Chester, Billy, and Rube—and jumped onto the back of the truck, some missing, grabbing the back fender and being dragged until they righted themselves and climbed up with their fellows.
    Teeheezal stood on the running board, nearly falling off as they hit the curb at the park across the street, where the benches had a No Petting sign above them.
    “Head for the dago part of town,” said Teeheezal, taking his belt and holster through the window from Sgt. Hank. “Here,” he said to the sergeant, knocking his hand away from the siren crank. “Lemme do that!”
    The world was a high screaming whine, and a blur of speed and nightsticks in motion when there was a job to be done.

Introduction: Occam’s Ducks
    I’ M GLAD OSCAR MICHEAUX and other filmmakers of the separate “race,” or black cinema of the teens through the fifties, are getting their due. They made films, sometimes on less than nothing, sometimes with a budget that would approach one for a regular-movie short subject; to be shown in theaters in black neighborhoods in the North, and at segregated showings throughout the South (where the black audience all sat in the balconies, even though they were the only ones there; it was the same place they sat when a regular Hollywood film was shown). Sometimes Micheaux would get some actors, shoot some photos for stills and lobby cards, and take them around the South, saying to theater owners, “This is knocking ’em dead in Harlem and Chicago, but I only have three prints. Give me twenty dollars and I’ll guarantee you’ll get it first when I get the new prints.” With the money he and his coworkers got that way, he’d go and make the movies, sometimes with different actors than had appeared in the stills . . . (Roberts Townsend and Rodriguez didn’t invent credit-card filmmaking—it was just that credit cards weren’t around back then; if they had been, Micheaux could have saved lots of shoe leather . . .).
    Starring in these race pictures (usually the entire cast was black, with a token Honky or two) were black entertainers from vaudeville, theater, the real movies (these were the only times they’d ever have leads in films and be top-billed); plus people who seem to only have acted in race movies (and who probably had day jobs). The