Summary: <p><span><a href="https://twitter.com/CollinsWilmot">Wilmot Collins</a> was born and raised in civil war-torn Liberia. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/wilmot-collins-helena-montana-mayor-senate-race/672852/">Being witness to political violence and corruption in his own country, he became fascinated with America’s system of government in college</a>. Confronted with violence, and hunger, he eventually fled with his fiance, Maddie, to Ghana in 1990, finding work as a teacher. </span>Still struggling, they then decided to go to America. Maddie, pregnant at the time, got a student visa to go to nursing school in Montana. Wilmot would join her, and meet his young daughter, almost two years later in Helena. </p> <p>Today, Wilmot Collins is the first Black mayor of Helena, Montana's capital city with a population 33,000. Montana state has a less than 1-percent Black population. </p> <p>We speak to Mayor Collins about his journey to America as a refugee, the hope and worry he sees in America's democracy, and leading a predominantly white city as a Black mayor.</p>
