RUN: The Wilmot Collins Story-from Liberian Refugee to the First Black Mayor in Montana

The incredible true story of how Wilmot Collins fled his war-torn African homeland to make a new home in America, becoming a community activist, a political leader, and an inspiration for hope in a time of rising anti-immigration sentiment. Run tells the inspiring story of Wilmot Collins, who fled the brutal and bloody Liberian Civil War in the early 1990s-where over 250,000 Liberians were killed, including two of Collins’s brothers-and managed to make it to Helena, Montana, one of the whitest places on the planet.Enduring and overcoming racism and xenophobia, he joined the Montana National Guard, became an active member of the Helena community, and in 2017 rose to become mayor of the capital city and the first Black mayor in Montana’s history. Collins garnered a national reputation not only as a beloved Democratic politician in a ruby red state but also as a shining example of how being a racial and political outsider in a highly partisan society can be transformed into an effective a