(Radio Iowa) – A Democrat who represented the Fort Dodge area for 16 years has published a memoir that begins with her childhood during the early years of the civil rights movement and ends with her hopes for the future. Helen Miller was first elected to the Iowa House in 2002 – just three years after she and her husband moved to Fort Dodge. “I had to figure out being a black person with a vastly majority white legislature, how to get things done for my constituents,” Miller says.

Miller was born in 1945 — the day before World War II ended. “There was a racial incident in South Carolina and my mother and father had to leave,” Miller says. “They wound up moving to New Jersey as a result, so race determined where I was literally born.” Miller, who is 79, started writing the book about four years ago, after attending the Okoboji Writers Retreat.

“By the second one I had the idea in my head about what I wanted to do that would make the story interesting and, especially in light of the times that we’re in, relevant,” Miller said. Miller writes about the riots that erupted in her hometown of Newark in 1967 and other milestones in the civil rights movement, including her endorsement of Barack Obama before the 2008 Iowa Caucuses.

Miller, who is an attorney, spearheaded a summit in Waterloo in 2015 that featured bipartisan leaders working on criminal justice reform at the national level.  “There were things that were done because we started paying attention,” Miller says. “And that was a very, very bipartisan effort because, I tell you very honestly, it probably wouldn’t have happened with Koch.” The company was run at the time by brothers Charles and David Koch, prominent Republican donors who supported criminal sentencing reform. After Miller left the legislature in 2019, Republican Governor Kim Reynolds appointed her to chair the Iowa Board of Parole.

The title of Miller’s book is “I Can’t Swim: A Memoir.” Her late husband was a physician in the military and a former commander of the hospital at Langley Air Force Base. He retired from the U-S Air Force in 1999 and the couple moved to Fort Dodge, where he joined a medical practice.