Ghana · Nigeria · Sierra Leone — Creek · Tawakoni · Choctaw — Ireland · Britain
A nearly 400-year American story
Three streams. One thread. One remarkable family.
The pioneering African- and Native-American Stroud family wove three bloodlines into a single American story — from a Texas slave plantation to the Apollo program, the 1928 Olympic trials, the opera stage, and the age of AI.
The Stroud Family Colorado website chronicles the inspiring and historic African- and Native-American achievements of the pioneering Stroud family.
I’m Frank “Rio” Shines, descendant of Kimball Dolphus (K.D.) Stroud and Lulu Magee Stroud. My grandfather was Tandy Stroud — son of Kimball and Lulu — and my great-uncle was Dolphus Stroud, Phi Beta Kappa scholar and 1928 Olympic hopeful.
If you’re family, press, or a friend of the legacy, reach me at fpshines@gmail.com.
TB Stroud Scholarship Fund — $2,000
Supporting education for Stroud family descendants. Watch the announcement, then follow three steps to apply.
Compose Your Email
Write a heartfelt, specific email describing how you will use the $2,000 award. Be sincere and reflect the values of the Stroud family legacy — your words matter.
Send to a Scholarship Administrator
Submit your email to either Pierre Pandy at ppandy@oneunireal.com or Sadia Roland at sadiaandgabriel@yahoo.com. Both are official Scholarship Administrators ready to receive your application.
Await Review
The scholarship committee will carefully review all submissions and notify recipients. Your story will be heard with care and consideration for the Stroud family legacy.
The Lineage · Three Streams
Three peoples, woven into one name.
Family stories, congressional records, and DNA all tell the same truth: the Strouds are the braid of three histories that met on this continent and refused to come apart.
——— Strand I · Africa
Out of Africa
The first modern humans, across six continents and 60,000 years — and the enslaved Africans who carried that lineage to the American colonies, some earning freedom by fighting in the Revolution.
GHANA · NIGERIA · SIERRA LEONE · SUDAN
——— Strand II · First Nations
Of this land
Rooted on this continent for seventeen thousand years before the United States existed — and survivors of the Trail of Tears that scattered the nations westward.
CREEK (MUSCOGEE) · TAWAKONI · CHOCTAW
——— Strand III · The Isles
The name we carry
The Magees and Strouds who arrived from the British Isles — including Rev. James H. Magee, freeman, statesman, and abolitionist, who gave the family both a surname and a fighting conscience.
IRELAND · BRITAIN · ( SCANDINAVIA · FRANCE )
The First Free Generation · Maryland, c. 1670
Where the record begins — nearly four centuries ago.
The documented family starts on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, when an enslaved African man and a free Irishwoman crossed a line the colony had drawn — and one law turned their union into freedom that held for good.
c. 1670 · Somerset County, Maryland
Sambo Game & Maudlin Magee
Sue’s grandparents
Sambo Game — African, born about 1670, enslaved and later manumitted in 1709 with land of his own. Maudlin Magee — a free Irishwoman. Because Maudlin was free, the colonial law of partus sequitur ventrem made their whole line free.
Born free
Fortune Game
their daughter · Sue’s mother
Free on Maryland soil — though “free” still meant years of indenture for a mixed-race child in the colony.
1705
“Mulatto Sue” Magee-Game
the documented matriarch
Sambo Game — African, born about 1670, enslaved and later manumitted in 1709 with land of his own. Maudlin Magee — a free Irishwoman. Because Maudlin was free, the colonial law of partus sequitur ventrem made their whole line free.
The Creek and Tawakoni strand braids in generations later, through Carrie Bolduc — and four generations on, the line reaches Rev. K.D. and Lulu Magee Stroud, and the Remarkable Eleven of Colorado.
Sambo Game · Maudlin Magee · “Mulatto Sue” → the Strouds of Colorado & SHINES OF IDAHO
Maryland, 1670 · Texas plantation · Oklahoma Territory · Colorado Springs, 1910
Grounded in legacy
The Remarkable Eleven
One generation out of slavery. 2x Eleven extraordinary lives.
Born on a Texas slave plantation, Rev. K.D. Stroud and his wife Lulu Magee Stroud raised eleven children in Colorado Springs. Historian John Stokes Holley named them the Remarkable Eleven in The Invisible People of the Pikes Peak Region. And the Shines Pioneer Street Eleven. They used education as the technology of their time — and changed a city, a college, and a country.
Kelley Dolphus Stroud
Phi Beta Kappa · 1928 Olympic Trials
Kimbal Stroud Goffman
Essayist · The Atlantic, 1939
The firstborn of the Eleven — a political strategist a sitting governor consulted, and one of the few Black women to publish in The Atlantic Monthly. Her essay “Black Pride” named the idea nearly thirty years before the movement caught up — written while she worked as a cook and maid.
Jack Stroud
Apollo Program Engineer
Helped send Americans to the Moon — the family’s literal reach for the stars, one generation removed from a plantation. Jack wrote the equation to safely return astronauts to Earth.
Effie Stroud Frazier
First Sachs Scholar · Chemist
Top of her high-school class; first African- / Native-American to earn a Sachs Scholarship and graduate with highest honors at Colorado College. Sachs Foundation approaches 100 years.
Tandy Stroud
Scholar-Athlete
Dolphus’s brother and fellow competitor — and grandfather of Frank “Rio” Shines. Tandy was a scholar-athlete, attended Howard, published newspaper, served as statistician in US Army as WWII vet.
Nina Stroud Pellerin
Educator · 1954
The first certified Black teacher in the Colorado Springs public school system. Chronicled family’s history here.
Bobbie Stroud
Music & Art Prodigy
Transcribed her father’s dream-born hymn, Anthem of Heaven, a century before it filled a museum hall.
Lu Lu Stroud Pollard
Civic Leader
Honored in Colorado Springs, where Lu Lu Pollard Park bears her name.
Awakening history with AI
Old photographs, new life.
The family is using AI to restore century-old images and bring ancestors back into focus — and has built an interactive Stroud Family Copilot that answers questions about the lineage. The same impulse that sent the Eleven to school now sends their descendants into the future.
The next generation
Stroud Scholars
The Colorado College Stroud Scholars — named for Effie and Dolphus — has opened the college door for dozens of students, with the Stroud Leadership Academy coaching underserved youth across the US, Africa, and Brazil. The vision: a world where everyone starts at the same line.
The living thread
Today’s progeny
PhDs, AI experts, founders, and athletes — from author Dr. Barbara Stroud and entrepreneur Fern Stroud to AI strategist Frank “Rio” Shines (Stroud) to champion gymnast Rachel Shines, the youngest strand still being woven.
1670
First free generation
60k
Years of migration
3
Continents of giveback
The Living Archive
The story, told in stage, film, and ink.
A family that refused to be invisible keeps telling its own story — across an opera house, a documentary lens, and a shelf of books.
Opera · with IBOC & Colorado College
RACE, the Opera
A next-generation opera chronicling Dolphus Stroud blazing a path for Black athletes and scholars from Colorado Springs to Boston — with siblings Tandy, Effie, and Jack. Experience it →
Documentary Film
Running to Harvard
A man, a family, and a Colorado “Olympic city” that dared to dream — the untold story of a nearly 2,000-mile journey toward the 1928 trials, restored with AI.
Experience it →
Add your thread to the weave.
Descendants, researchers, and friends of the family — share a story, join the next reunion, or help carry the legacy forward through the scholars and the screen.