Montana Book Co welcomes former Helena Mayor Wilmot Collins and his Biographer Daniel Blake Smith to the store for a special evening in conversation. We invite you to join!
RUN: The Wilmot Collins Story—From Liberian Refugee to First Black Mayor in Montana
The University Press of Kansas announces the publication of RUN: The Wilmot Collins Story—From Liberian Refugee to First Black Mayor in Montana by award-winning author and filmmaker Daniel Blake Smith. The Wilmot Collins story is a powerful and timely narrative that speaks directly to some of the most urgent questions shaping public life today. At a moment of heightened debate over immigration, race, and belonging, this book offers a story that is as necessary as it is inspiring.
Wilmot Collins fled the devastation of the Liberian Civil War after losing family members and witnessing the collapse of his homeland. Smith traces Collins’s extraordinary journey from violence and displacement to Helena, where he and his wife, Maddie Muna, rebuilt their lives. In a community where he stood apart racially, culturally, and politically, Collins emerged as a unifying civic leader—ultimately becoming, in 2017, the first Black mayor in Montana’s history.
Through extensive interviews and masterful storytelling, Smith transforms Collins’s experience into a account of national consequence. RUN reveals how personal resilience can intersect with public service, demonstrating how those often positioned at the margins can reshape the very institutions they enter. The book challenges prevailing assumptions about leadership, showing how empathy, lived experience, and community engagement can bridge divides in an increasingly polarized society.
More than a biography, RUN is a compelling argument for a broader, more inclusive understanding of the American Dream. It underscores the human stakes behind political debates and offers a vision of civic life grounded in perseverance, generosity, and shared purpose. In doing so, the book stands as both an important scholarly contribution and an urgent call to reconsider who belongs—and who leads—in contemporary America.
