As thousands of National Guard troops, and nearly a dozen federal law enforcement agencies, occupy majority-Black communities in the District, President Donald J. Trump has set on taking similar action in Chicago, Baltimore, and what many predict will be other U.S. Black urban centers.
For actor-activist Samuel Lee Fudge, such a situation calls for the establishment of a Black nation on American soil, and in solidarity with Black people across the globe, much like what Marcus Mosiah Garvey espoused more than a century ago.
“Donald Trump is clear on what he represents and who he’s representing, and if that’s not an alarming reminder for us to start uniting, I don’t know what is,” Fudge told The Informer. “Marcus Garvey told us that we can’t depend on a government in general. We can’t depend on any race outside of our own to be our leader, to lead us, to get us to the promised land of progressiveness. This is the time that we need to have our own government, just like Garvey preached.”
An Inside Look at the ‘Mosiah’ Film
Fudge conceptualized, wrote and starred in “Mosiah,” an independent short film depicting the 1923 court trial that led to Garvey’s incarceration and subsequent deportation to his birth country of Jamaica.
The film, originally released in 2023, appeared on Amazon on January 19, 2025, in commemoration of President Joe Biden’s pardon of Garvey.
“Mosiah,” 40 minutes in length, delves into Garvey’s upbringing in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, as well as his launch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association-African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), through which he circulated the Negro World newspaper globally and established factories, a paramilitary group, the Black Cross Nurses, and the Black Star Steamship Line.
In 1923, an all-white jury convicted Garvey of mail fraud, under what Biden acknowledged as politically motivated circumstances. In “Mosiah,” viewers learn about Benny Dancy, the cooperating witness who infiltrated the UNIA-ACL and gathered what prosecutors described as evidence of stock solicitations for the Black Star Steamship Line.
Dancy testified against Garvey, albeit without any specificity about who sent him an envelope with “UNIA” emblazoned across it or how many stock shares he purchased.
Fudge said the testimony further solidified the government’s case against the Black Nationalist leader— in court chambers and in the court of public opinion. That’s why, in conceptualizing the film, he wanted to address long-persisting misconceptions of Garvey.
“We had to be strategic and selective in those particular points,” Fudge said. “That’s why I wrote and centered around the court trial, because for those who do know, or for those who have been miseducated on who Marcus Garvey is or was, they all know about the court case. They all know him to be this fraud. They know him to be a person who misled the Black masses.”
Garvey died in London in 1940, never returning to the U.S. or setting foot on African soil.
However, his legacy inspired the likes of Malcolm X, whose parents were Garveyites, as well as Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first post-colonial president and Hogan Edem Ani-Okokon, a Nigerian nationalist and comrade of Nnamdi Azikwe, Nigeria’s first post-colonial president.
In speaking about “Mosiah,” Fudge said he’s set out to energize those still waving the red, black and green flag that Garvey designated as the banner of global African nationhood. Those watching the film get to watch electrifying Garvey monologues from Fudge, and aspects of the court trial often cited as proof that the U.S. government unfairly targeted the activist.
The film also includes intimate moments, including when Garvey and his second wife Amy Jacques Garvey call each other by their pet names, Momsy and Popsy.
“Only true Garveyites would know those detailed things, and so that’s where we wanted to energize, entertain, and rejuvenate them,” Fudge told The Informer. “I used different words from different speeches to put them all together for particular scenes so people who are familiar with Garvey’s words could feel that.”
Samuel Lee Fudge Continues to Advance a Cause Near and Dear to His Heart
Since the release of “Mosiah,” Fudge has conducted private film screenings across the country and other parts of the world. In his role as the official UNIA-ACL cultural ambassador, he has also channeled the spirit of Garvey while appearing before audiences in cities where Garvey lectured.
On July 20, what’s known as UNIA Founder’s Day, Fudge, much like well-known actor Ron Bobb-Semple before him, performed a monologue at William O. Lockridge Library in Southwest, D.C., during an event hosted by the D.C. Mosiah Coalition.
UNIA-ACL member Mwariama Kamau said the event allowed for Garveyites of all ages to celebrate a crucial milestone in film history.
“It’s been too many people deliberately skipping over the largest and most impactful and influential movement that we’ve ever had in order to play into some safer subjects [like] civil rights and integration,” said Kamau, a founding member of the D.C. Mosiah Coalition, an entity that includes members of UNIA governments formed after Garvey’s conviction.
Kamau noted the critical role of Garvey’s story and work serving as an inspiration for modern changemakers.
“They don’t want us to deal with really empowering ourselves,” Kamau told The Informer, “so I think the timeliness of bringing Garvey back on the scene and on the screen was important for us to start looking in another direction for more inspiring films about what we can do and what we have done.”
Since its release, “Mosiah” has won 18 awards, half of which recognizes Fudge’s acting prowess. They include Best Short Film at the Charlotte Film Festival and the Harriet Tubman Award at the Hip-Hop Film Festival. “Mosiah,” the first film production about Garvey, counts among more than a dozen acting and production credits to Fudge’s name.
Fudge, 34, earned an MFA in performing arts from Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia and a B.A. in film from Paine College in Augusta, Georgia. He credits his community-centered upbringing as impetus in his creation of, and involvement in, film projects that educate and inspire Black people.
It was no different when it came to “Mosiah,” a film Fudge said was inspired by the anti-police brutality protests that broke out long before, and in the aftermath of, George Floyd’s police-involved murder. He told The Informer that he needed to play a role that he thought would go further than protest.
“I would still watch the news. I would still see white officers get acquitted,” Fudge said. “I would see the very same people who would be vocal about it go back into their state of sleepiness and talk about things that were just irrelevant.”
That’s why, for Fudge, the solution was simple.
“I said, we need to change, and that change for me, was Marcus Garvey,” Fudge emphasized. “If anyone can change the world at this particular moment, it would be the voice of Marcus Garvey.”
