December 19, 2025 • 30 mins
Episode 3 features the incredible story of Dolphus Stroud. In 1928, Dolphus Stroud qualified for the Olympic trials in the 5k race. However, as a Black man he was denied funding and transportation to get to the trials at Harvard Stadium. Undeterred, 19-year-old Dolphus walked over 2,000 miles from Colorado Springs to Cambridge, Massachusetts. His descendant Frank Shines joins Host Vanessa Tyler to share details about Dolphus' journey and the incredible accomplishments of the Stroud family despite the obstacles of racism. https://runningtoharvard.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now on black Land. This is Black History Month. Here's
some history. The year nineteen twenty eight. Adolphus Stroud was
good and fast, good enough to be included in the
Olympic trials.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Unfortunately, despite that promise, they told them that sorry, for
whatever reason, so we can't allow you to ride on
a train, and we can't fund your travel.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
It's always something.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
But he had to get there and determined he would
travel with me to the nineteen hundreds and the story
of the Stroud family. I'm going to let it descendant,
Frank Shines peel back the layers of this family. This
black family wasn't as we typically think in the South.
They were in the West, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Frank's grandfather,
(00:47):
Tandy Stroud, along with his grandfather's older brother Adolphus Stroud,
were athletic, academically, brilliant and black. Both ran track. Adolphus
was real fast, so fast, he was a tender for
the Olympics. Here his trial and his trip on black Land.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
And now as a brown person, you just feel so invisible.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
And where we're from, brothers and sisters, I love you
to dis joint ful and day freedom.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Where we are I know someone heard something and where
we're going. We the people means all the people, the
black information that worth presents Blackland. With your host Vanessa Tyler,
there is so.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Much Black history not in history books, and at a
time when there are efforts to eliminate what little of
our history is told.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I have a.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Story I'm certain you've never.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Heard, but proves our courage and resiliency. Here to tell
it is Frank Shines who has the Stroud family blood
running through his veins.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Frank, welcome, Thank you for having me. Much appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
The story of the Stroud family is fascinating. Let's start
with Dulphus Stroud. Take us right back to nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, sure will. So the family moved in nineteen ten
from Indian Territory to Colorado Springs and that's where Dolphins
grew up. And in nineteen twenty eight is the time
when he decided that he was going to make a
run for the Olympics, and so he began to train.
He was not allowed to train or even work out
(02:29):
on the high school track or with a high school
track team. So the coach, a white coach, gave him
a regiment and showed him how to do some basic
stretching and exercises and training, and then told him to
run up and down Pike's Peak, which is the longest,
the largest summit there in the Colorado Springs area, about
fourteen thousand feet. So that's how he began to train,
(02:53):
and in June of nineteen twenty eight, he won the
rock Key Mountain Region Olympic tryouts for the five k
race that automatically qualified him for the Olympic Trials to
be held at Harvard Stadium and Cambridge. And unfortunately, despite
(03:18):
that promise, they told him that sorry, for whatever reasons,
we can't allow you to ride on the train and
we can't fund your travel.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
That surprise, so you got and everything you needed, but
there was always the obstacles exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
And of course his coach said, you know, you know, listen,
you've done your best, and his parents and the family,
you know, confided in him and said, you know, hey,
you know, let's just get ready for Colorado College. And
he said, no, let me spend the weekend. I'm going
to go up to the mountains as you often did did.
And he went up to the Rocky Mountains and thought
(03:57):
about it over the weekend, came back down and had
made his decision that he was going to make it
one way or another, And so he set out on
foot a few days later on June twenty fifth, at
four a m with a forty pound backpack, a golf club,
and ten dollars in his pocket. Wow.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So here he is a teenager in the twenties, a
black man, right going what two thousand miles from Colorado
to Harvard University where these Olympic trials.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Were exactly That's exactly it. And at that time his
brother had been writing things and been involved with anti
lynching because that was a big issue. So obviously the
family was very concerned about his safety for that reason, How.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Was going to ask you, how dangerous was it for
a black man to be traveling across the country like that?
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yes, extremely dangerous, And at that point there were only
about fifteen less than twenty percent of Americans even had cars,
so he was hoping he might get a few rides,
but of course that made things even more dangerous out
on the roads, and he encountered a lot of violent people.
He also encountered a number of people who were very
helpful and helped him along and in a lot of
(05:11):
different ways. He came across a lot of wild dogs
at night, and he had to run up trees and
things of that sort. So it wasn't it wasn't an
easy going that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Was it any kind of like underground help? Maybe from
black home to black home? I mean, where did he
Where did he sleep?
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Where did he eat?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Mostly outside, many times in cemeteries along the way parks.
But yeah, he found every once in a while he
would find a black family. In fact, many times, when
you know, the weather got particularly bad storms and so forth,
he would knock on doors and ask if they would
let him in or let him just sleep at the
(05:50):
back with the barn with the animals, and they would say, no,
go down the road. There's a black family somewhere down there,
another five miles, and so he would walk on and
you know, be difficult to find those black families at
that time. There also obviously wasn't much communication of any sort,
and so things were happening by telegram. One thing that
did happen is once he arrived outside of Chicago, he
(06:14):
got news at someone on the road said they want
you to stop by the the station, and he goes
what station is at the news the news station, So
it was the Chicago Daily News. He stopped by there
and they did a quick interview, communicated information, and then
put out on all the newspapers this gentleman, Dolphus Stroud
(06:36):
is making it for Olympics, and and gave him a
sign to put on his back when he was walking.
And that's when he started to get getting rides. And
that's when a lot more black folks along the roads
and so forth helped them, but people of all colors
and genders and races helped them after that point.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Wow, so he finally makes it.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
What happens then?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yes, So twelve days later he arrived just six hours
before the start of the race and darial six hours.
He writes in his notes, I spent those in the
three blocks two hours putting on you know, a black
man putting on a red, white, and blue. He took
a lot of pride in that. The reason he went
(07:18):
across is he said it was for three things, his family,
the Rocky Mountain region, and people of color around the world.
And so when he put on the uniform, he had
a lot of pride in that. And then he said
he was just so tired. He wanted to stay awake,
and that was the only thing he could think about,
so he walked along the quarters of Harvard Stadium. He
(07:41):
had been accepted to Harvard in nineteen twenty five as
when he graduated from high school as the valedictorian number one. However,
he couldn't afford to go to the college. So when
he was there on the campus for the first time,
he went through the library he hoped about, you know,
winning the Olympics, making it to the Olympics, winning the Olympics,
and being able to afford to go to to Harvard.
And then the last third of the time, the last
(08:03):
two hours he spent just trying to stay awake, warming
up and being ready for the race. The gun went off.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
What happened next?
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Nineteen twenty five black Man Adolphus Stroud walked two thousand miles.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
He was good enough to make it to the Olympic trials,
but the.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Color of his skin prevented him from getting the funding
like the others on the track team and traveling. Resting
on a train ride there, he walked. He was exhausted.
Could he pull it off?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
He said? He went to run and his legs wouldn't move.
He felt like he was running in mud and seemen,
and all of a sudden he noticed people starting to
pass you. Eventually he made it through six laps before
he finally collapsed from malnutrition and.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Exhaustion.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Wow, but at least he made it, and at least
he ran the race.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
That's right, you mentioned Harvard.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
The people back home in Colorado couldn't really deny his
first his athletic ability, and they couldn't deny his intelligence.
Talk about how intelligent Dolphus was.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yes, interestingly enough, and when I first began to understand this,
though I didn't know the story of my family, be
quite honest with you, which is really an unfortunate thing
as for many of US African Americans and even others.
But growing up, you know, at the time, Oakland, California
had one of the highest crime rates in the country.
So we were on welfare with my four younger sisters
(09:34):
and my mom. Unfortunately, she had part of the family
from my grandfather's side.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Had passed.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
It had received some sort of ailment, and they eventually
thought it was originally schizophrenia or some forth. They'd also
found out it was Huntingston's disease, and because of that,
I never knew my family's story because my mom was
not always coherent and I couldn't understand half of what
she's saying, whether it was true or not, and so
forth as a kid. So consequently, I didn't know about
(10:08):
this until I was in Colorado Springs and I got
a phone call from my aunt Lulu there at the
Air Force Academy. And so that's when she had asked me.
She goes, so, how's it going to the Air Force Academy.
I've been trying to reach her for the last three days,
And I said, yeah, I was in survival training.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
She goes, so how did it go?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And I said, well, I won at all the cadets,
I got the top oars and she goes, what else
are you doing? So I said, I'm on a gymnastics team,
and so forth. She goes, do you know where that
comes from? And I had no idea what she meant
by that. She goes, do you know about your grandfather
of Tandy and the history of dolphics here in Colorado Springs?
And that's when I began to understand just how prolific
(10:43):
both of them were as athletes, as scholar athletes, Tandy
graduating number two, Dolphins graduating number one, And so I said, Okay,
there's something going on here. It isn't just them, Katie.
Their father was raised, was born and raised on the
Texas Plan Tape up until age nineteen. Then they made
(11:04):
it to Indian Territory where he married a Creek Nation
Indian lady by the name of Lulu McGee, my great grandmother.
But while he was there he helped build Langston University.
He attended Langston University. He's study under the tutelage of
an attorney, and so we went to Colorado Springs. But
the children would tell us later was that they were
(11:28):
happy to go to school because the tests in school
were so much easier than their father Kd's. So that
is really where it came from. He believed in education.
He tied it to the children. He forced them to
read books. They had encyclopedias, they had a piano, they
had prime bone, they had a violin in the house.
And so I think it came from a lot of that.
He had two older siblings who I'm certain also passed
(11:51):
on knowledge to him as well. As he prepared to
enter into high school. But he was super He was
just super gifted.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah, like I said, your family is fascinating. Just to
make sure for clarification, Dolphus had a brother, Tandy, that's.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Where you're referring to. That was my great grandfather.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Okay, yeah, yeah, So so they were so Tandy was
Dolphice's younger brother, and they they competed. They really in
the classroom and on the field. In fact, a couple
of years after that race, Tandy was winning the Denver
Marathon and he collapsed less than a mile and a
half from the finish line, and and and Dolphics was
(12:33):
right behind him, of course, and and uh and Dolphins
went to help him. He goes, no, make sure a
shop wins the race. I'll be okay uh. And they
found him at the hospital several hours later. But Dolphins
ended up winning that race against media, the people he
had competed against in the Olympics. So so yes, the
family story is as I as I got to learn
more about it, and I spent time with my grandfather
when he was eighty three. I spent some time back
(12:56):
in California where he was living at the time when
I was in pilot training, and that's when he began
to tell me a lot more of the stories.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
What was it in them?
Speaker 1 (13:04):
You mentioned their parents, But to make them fight and
hold on to have a place in this world, it
couldn't have been easy.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
I know it wasn't easy, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
In fact, what Nina told us, So Nina is we
call her the professor of the of the family, Nina
because her her real name was number nine is what
they originally called her, because they couldn't keep up with
all these kids. So she was the ninth of the
eleven children. And so she was in California. She was
a dad junct professor at UC Berkeley, and she was
(13:39):
the first black teacher public teacher in Colorado Springs School District.
And so she kept a lot of the history of
the family that I later found out about. And she
said that to the parents that Lulu and Katie would
force the kids to be competitive and so, and they
wanted that for them because they knew how difficult it
was going to be for them when they went outside
(14:01):
of the family in a prominently white, almost all white
elementary school Bristol School and now well Colorado Springs High School,
Palmer High School. Now, so that's the way they prepared them.
They make sure they are very competitive. They forced the
older children to teach the younger children, and they every
(14:22):
day at the dinner table, Katie would say, Okay, who
had the smartest event in class today? And they would
all kind of vibe for Okay, I did this or
I learned this or whatever it was. So it was
a lot of internal rivalry.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
You know, I think about, you know, black, a black
family in Colorado, it just seems very unique. But talk
about the roots from Africa. How did they even get
to Colorado.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yes, so this part of the story is it's actually
just so fascinating, and I confirmed it through my own
DNA analysis with twenty three in me as I was
trying to really piece together everything. So my father's side
of the family is from Nigeria, the Shines, the Strouds
are from Ghana. And in eighteen forty two, an African
(15:17):
girl was born believing Georgia to the Stroud plantation there
and they separated her from her parents and ultimately she
ended up on what was called Pleasant Retreat. It's actually
in the Library of Congress associated with June tenth as
a seminole event. On June tenth that Stroud Plantation in
(15:40):
Limestone County, Texas is where she grew up and was
born in eighteen forty two in Georgia, and she apparently
created a lot of incidents. She was very strong willed,
and at one point they beat her quite extensively and
she had scars on her back, and their stories in
(16:00):
the family about the head of the household, the young
lady who had done this. But the plantation owner, Mandred,
had an affair with the Tewaukane Indian Native American Indian,
and nine months later, this child shows up on the
(16:22):
doorstep at the plantation, at the big house, and everybody's
wondering what's going on, and he had to confess about
the affair he had to his wife, and so they
ostracized this kid, and so he lived with primarily live
with the slaves, with the Africans. And when he grew older,
and this was by now right around eighteen sixty five
(16:46):
time period, he wanted to marry that young lady, the
African slave Kimball, my great great grandmother, And so that's
kind of the story of how things happened. Because of
all the racism and all the violence there, Mandred then
decided I'm going to move you guys. He'd called it
out of the country to Indian Territory, because Indian Territory
(17:08):
was considered, you know, a different country, right, So he
helped them move to Indian Territory. And that's where dolphins
then begin to thrive under the tutelage of the professors
and the teachers there at Langston University.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Wow, we are speaking with Frank Shines, a descendant of
the incredible Stroud family, a black family that fought hard
to overcome the obstacles of racism. In fact, Dolphus Stroud
in nineteen twenty eight made it to the Olympic trials,
but he had to get there, and of course they
wouldn't pay a black man's transportation across the country, so
(17:47):
he walked two thousand miles. I wanted to ask you
how did he get back to Colorado after participation.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
That's a great question. You know, almost no one ever
asked that question. They always thought what happened? They don't
know what happened? And that was it, right, I give
him the cliffhanger. Oh, you arrived there six hours before.
This was the most fascinating thing he talked about in
his notes how he was hallucinating even during at different
points during the walk out during the march, the journey
(18:15):
out to out from Colorado to Cambridge, and he said that,
you know, before he finally fainted during the sixth lap,
he said that he just thought, maybe I can make it,
and then he fainted, and then he said he woke
up and he was talking to this guy, Joey Ray. Now,
Joey Ray was the seminal long distance runner of the time,
(18:38):
had won all of these great world championships, and everyone
knew about Joey Ray. Well, he was talking to this gentleman.
He wasn't sure who it was, and this gentleman asked him, well,
tell me your story. How'd you get here? And you know,
I saw what happened back there. He had just assumed,
apparently that this gentleman had spoken with him right after
the race. It literally was two hours later, because Joey
(18:59):
Ray found out later his race was two hours later
on the same track. So dolphins must have laid there
just completely out of it. And so when he later
looked at these envelope, there's an envelope that Joey Ray
had left him. And only then he did he understand
that this was the great racer runner, Joey Ray. And
there was an envelope and it said, I understand. You
(19:21):
know you didn't have a plan for getting back. You
only thought about getting here. Called this gentleman or reach
out to the executive director of the White MCA in Boston,
and that's how he was able to spend the summer
working at restaurants. They gave him lodging. He made a
boatload of money, according to him, he bought a suit
(19:42):
and he was able to afford a first class train
trip back home. So that's how he ultimately returned back
to Colorado.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Into a blaze of glory.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
And was Joey Ray black or white?
Speaker 2 (19:53):
He was a white gentleman.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yes, you know.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
There is a photo that I saw on your website
of the family, all vintage. They're dressed in the nines.
They look wealthy, crowd determined. Do you know which photo
I'm referring to as the.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Iconic its iconic at nineteen twenty nine photo that was
actually requested from w the Boys for the Crisis magazine,
and so they sent out a photographer because they heard
about the family. But they also heard that during that
time this Black family was flourishing because Katie Strout had
figured out a way to create a trucking company to
(20:34):
do to haul ash and also to pick up garbage.
So they created the first kind of subscription for dumps
and trash. They're in the color Rail Springs area, and
that's why the family was successful for that short period
of time before unfortunately, Katie came down with lackcoman. At
that time, they didn't have any way to cure it,
(20:55):
so he became blind. But yeah, that was the story
behind that iconic nine twenty nine photo.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Beautiful photo. Your family is incredible.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
As I've said, there are so many relatives that you
have and so many tangents and other stories.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
That's enough to do a documentary, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yes, it is, And that's exactly what we're doing right now.
It's called Running to Harvard. And I've got a great crew,
Award winning crew cinematographer Kyle Hatchet. We got Mike pak
who's the historian photographer, a longtime friend of the family
and great friend of all of Colorado Springs and Denver.
And then the executive director, Ralph Michael Jerdonald who's created
(21:40):
many film festivals and other events and just a great
filmmaker in his own right.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Rag about yourself just a little bit more. You mentioned
something about flight school. What's your background?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yes, my background, as I mentioned earlier by Hooker Crook,
me and my older my two younger twin sisters. They
ended up dying prematurely, as did my father. My mother
for the reasons that we talked about earlier associated with
her health. But somehow my older sister and I we
made it out of the hood at that time because
(22:14):
the way things were in California, my mother automatically received
custody of us, so my father finally came back into
our lives. We moved up to Washington State when I
was thirteen years old, went to school there, and then
I just began to flourish academically as well as athletically.
Was on a gymnastics team, captain Honor Society. I was
(22:38):
a vocal jazz and cellist and got to travel around
competing in all of those different types of extracurricular activities.
And because of that, the Air Force Academy ultimately gave
me a presidential appointment to the Air Force Academy. I
went there, learned to fly, studied management, and engineering, and
(23:01):
met the Tuskegee Airman and a number of other great people,
whether it was the Kissingers or some of the presidents
and vice presidents. It was just amazing experience the four
years there, and was the captain and MVP of the
gymnastics team, and so part of the reason Lulu was
really curious was because she was trying to help me
(23:22):
understand the connection between Dophis who had this aspiration for
the nineteen twenty eight Olympics and here we are more
than sixty years later, and I was competing in training
against Olympic gymnasts there at the Air Force Academy and
the Olympic Training Center. So that's my background. I went
on to pilot training in Arizona and then went on
(23:45):
to work with the military doing management engineering, which is
kind of a combination of industrial engineering and management consulting,
and the military sent me to school, covered seventy five
percent of all my graduate studies, and since then on
to travel around the world working with IBM and Ernst
and Young lived in Brazil for over a year and
(24:06):
it's just been a really great experience and I can
only thank the family and the support of a lot
of coaches and teachers, many of them black along the way,
who believed in me and then later began to understand,
you know, how to believe in myself. I understood more
about our family history and what.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
A history it is. And you were recently reunited with
a sister.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yes, oh boy, you've done your research. So yeah, this
is kind of emotional. I apologize. But when we were
separated from my mother, my mother had a young daughter, Margaret,
and had just become pregnant with a younger sibling, a son.
(24:53):
Her son would have been my younger brother, but we
never met them because we are separated. And so Margaret,
who we knew at age two, we searched everywhere, Me
and my sister searched after we graduated from high school
and college, and we just could not find out what
had happened to Margaret. And about three years ago she
(25:16):
was looking she found Stroud family. She saw another iconic
photo of Lulu Stroud, of a little baby sitting in
a chair, and someone, one of her friends says, that
kid looks just like you, and you're a little baby.
She goes, no, I don't think so. And she looked
around and she saw my name and saw shines and
she goes, I think this may be my family, and
(25:36):
so I got an email and I gave her a
phone call. We started talking and sure enough her name
had been changed with Lisa, but the little two year
old Margaret. Forty four years later, I got her on
a plane to show up for the opening of Race
the Opera, which we performed there in Colorado Springs at
(25:57):
the Pioneers Museum. Tended that to a sold out audience.
She was sitting right in the front and we opened
and provided the whole backdrop for an African slave who
had this vision to write a song called Anthem of Heaven,
and now it's being featured as part of Race the Opera,
(26:19):
and some of that music will be included in the documentary.
So yeah, that's how we were reunited forty four years later.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Now your family also has the honor of having a
display at Colorado College. That must be great and certainly
another proun moment for the Stroud family.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Yes it is.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
And I got a phone call just before COVID in
December of twenty nineteen, and it was the president of
Colorado College. She knew of the work I had been
doing as a as a family historian and invited me
as well as a number of other people out, and
(27:03):
they didn't really explain what was going to happen, and
then we were met with the press and all the
honors around what was What they created was just called
the Stroud Scholars and we've since have brought in well,
I guess four different cohorts of children, I shouldn't call
them children, young adults from high school all the way
(27:23):
up through college level through the program, and that first
cohort is now in their sophomore year in colleges around
the country. And then they also dedicated the VIP floor,
the fourth floor of the Ropes and Arena, a new
arena that was created in Colorado Springs on the campus.
They dedicated that to Dophice and the family as well.
(27:47):
So it was a pretty powerful series of days and
events that took place.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
How can people learn more about your fascinating family? Just
so many layers, it's just amazing. And when will the
documentary be revealed?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
The documentary will be revealed later this year, and right
now we are on target for it happening just before
the Olympics in July. Knock on wood and the best
way to reach us is just go to running too
Harvard dot com. Or if you want to look at
Stroud Family of Colorado, just search Stroud Family Colorado. You'll
(28:27):
see our website come up Stroudfamilycolorado dot com or running
to Harvard dot com.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
And finally, what's the message you want our people to
take away from your family's story?
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, I didn't see people like me in the textbooks.
I didn't see people like me in most of the
prestigious positions growing up in Oakland, California. I believe you
know it was excited about the Apollo Mission. I had
no idea that Jack Stroud, my great uncle, was the
(29:02):
gentleman who wrote the formulas to safely return astronauts from
the Moon to Earth. So how many other hidden figures
are out there that we don't know of? My hope
is there are two questions I often get when I
talk about the family, go out in public speaking and
so forth. One is, Wow, what an incredible family. But
the other is, how did you do the background in
research to find your family? On the Shinne side of
(29:23):
the family, we can't find hardly anything. We've been lucky
on the stro outside of the family that We've had
some great people, so the message would be believe in
all of us. The stories that are out there are incredible,
and I wish everyone well and hope that perhaps in
a small way, we're in a presidential election year when
(29:44):
an Olympic year. My hope is that perhaps this untold
Olympic story might just help to heal our nation as well,
because we certainly need to find a way to work
together better and reduce to polarization.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Thank you as we celebrate blos History Month. This is
black history we need to know. Frank Shein's producer of
the documentary Running to Harvard, Thank you for keeping this
legacy alive. Next time on Blackland with Vanessa Tyler, what
is it about true crime that has us hooked? We're
going in to solve that mystery. You have to hear this.
(30:20):
I talk with the sister who calls herself the longest
living Jane Doe.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
And it's taken me over twenty years of searching for
my true I getian to discover that I Will been
missing for well over fifty years. They were on the
impression that I was psychologically unvalid.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
On the next Blackland with Vanessa Tyler,
Now on black Land. This is Black History Month. Here's
some history. The year nineteen twenty eight. Adolphus Stroud was
good and fast, good enough to be included in the
Olympic trials.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Unfortunately, despite that promise, they told them that sorry, for
whatever reason, so we can't allow you to ride on
a train, and we can't fund your travel.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
It's always something.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
But he had to get there and determined he would
travel with me to the nineteen hundreds and the story
of the Stroud family. I'm going to let it descendant,
Frank Shines peel back the layers of this family. This
black family wasn't as we typically think in the South.
They were in the West, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Frank's grandfather,
(00:47):
Tandy Stroud, along with his grandfather's older brother Adolphus Stroud,
were athletic, academically, brilliant and black. Both ran track. Adolphus
was real fast, so fast, he was a tender for
the Olympics. Here his trial and his trip on black Land.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
And now as a brown person, you just feel so invisible.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
And where we're from, brothers and sisters, I love you
to dis joint ful and day freedom.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Where we are I know someone heard something and where
we're going. We the people means all the people, the
black information that worth presents Blackland. With your host Vanessa Tyler,
there is so.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Much Black history not in history books, and at a
time when there are efforts to eliminate what little of
our history is told.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I have a.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Story I'm certain you've never.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Heard, but proves our courage and resiliency. Here to tell
it is Frank Shines who has the Stroud family blood
running through his veins.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Frank, welcome, Thank you for having me. Much appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
The story of the Stroud family is fascinating. Let's start
with Dulphus Stroud. Take us right back to nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, sure will. So the family moved in nineteen ten
from Indian Territory to Colorado Springs and that's where Dolphins
grew up. And in nineteen twenty eight is the time
when he decided that he was going to make a
run for the Olympics, and so he began to train.
He was not allowed to train or even work out
(02:29):
on the high school track or with a high school
track team. So the coach, a white coach, gave him
a regiment and showed him how to do some basic
stretching and exercises and training, and then told him to
run up and down Pike's Peak, which is the longest,
the largest summit there in the Colorado Springs area, about
fourteen thousand feet. So that's how he began to train,
(02:53):
and in June of nineteen twenty eight, he won the
rock Key Mountain Region Olympic tryouts for the five k
race that automatically qualified him for the Olympic Trials to
be held at Harvard Stadium and Cambridge. And unfortunately, despite
(03:18):
that promise, they told him that sorry, for whatever reasons,
we can't allow you to ride on the train and
we can't fund your travel.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
That surprise, so you got and everything you needed, but
there was always the obstacles exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
And of course his coach said, you know, you know, listen,
you've done your best, and his parents and the family,
you know, confided in him and said, you know, hey,
you know, let's just get ready for Colorado College. And
he said, no, let me spend the weekend. I'm going
to go up to the mountains as you often did did.
And he went up to the Rocky Mountains and thought
(03:57):
about it over the weekend, came back down and had
made his decision that he was going to make it
one way or another, And so he set out on
foot a few days later on June twenty fifth, at
four a m with a forty pound backpack, a golf club,
and ten dollars in his pocket. Wow.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So here he is a teenager in the twenties, a
black man, right going what two thousand miles from Colorado
to Harvard University where these Olympic trials.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Were exactly That's exactly it. And at that time his
brother had been writing things and been involved with anti
lynching because that was a big issue. So obviously the
family was very concerned about his safety for that reason, How.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Was going to ask you, how dangerous was it for
a black man to be traveling across the country like that?
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yes, extremely dangerous, And at that point there were only
about fifteen less than twenty percent of Americans even had cars,
so he was hoping he might get a few rides,
but of course that made things even more dangerous out
on the roads, and he encountered a lot of violent people.
He also encountered a number of people who were very
helpful and helped him along and in a lot of
(05:11):
different ways. He came across a lot of wild dogs
at night, and he had to run up trees and
things of that sort. So it wasn't it wasn't an
easy going that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Was it any kind of like underground help? Maybe from
black home to black home? I mean, where did he
Where did he sleep?
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Where did he eat?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Mostly outside, many times in cemeteries along the way parks.
But yeah, he found every once in a while he
would find a black family. In fact, many times, when
you know, the weather got particularly bad storms and so forth,
he would knock on doors and ask if they would
let him in or let him just sleep at the
(05:50):
back with the barn with the animals, and they would say, no,
go down the road. There's a black family somewhere down there,
another five miles, and so he would walk on and
you know, be difficult to find those black families at
that time. There also obviously wasn't much communication of any sort,
and so things were happening by telegram. One thing that
did happen is once he arrived outside of Chicago, he
(06:14):
got news at someone on the road said they want
you to stop by the the station, and he goes
what station is at the news the news station, So
it was the Chicago Daily News. He stopped by there
and they did a quick interview, communicated information, and then
put out on all the newspapers this gentleman, Dolphus Stroud
(06:36):
is making it for Olympics, and and gave him a
sign to put on his back when he was walking.
And that's when he started to get getting rides. And
that's when a lot more black folks along the roads
and so forth helped them, but people of all colors
and genders and races helped them after that point.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Wow, so he finally makes it.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
What happens then?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yes, So twelve days later he arrived just six hours
before the start of the race and darial six hours.
He writes in his notes, I spent those in the
three blocks two hours putting on you know, a black
man putting on a red, white, and blue. He took
a lot of pride in that. The reason he went
(07:18):
across is he said it was for three things, his family,
the Rocky Mountain region, and people of color around the world.
And so when he put on the uniform, he had
a lot of pride in that. And then he said
he was just so tired. He wanted to stay awake,
and that was the only thing he could think about,
so he walked along the quarters of Harvard Stadium. He
(07:41):
had been accepted to Harvard in nineteen twenty five as
when he graduated from high school as the valedictorian number one. However,
he couldn't afford to go to the college. So when
he was there on the campus for the first time,
he went through the library he hoped about, you know,
winning the Olympics, making it to the Olympics, winning the Olympics,
and being able to afford to go to to Harvard.
And then the last third of the time, the last
(08:03):
two hours he spent just trying to stay awake, warming
up and being ready for the race. The gun went off.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
What happened next?
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Nineteen twenty five black Man Adolphus Stroud walked two thousand miles.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
He was good enough to make it to the Olympic trials,
but the.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Color of his skin prevented him from getting the funding
like the others on the track team and traveling. Resting
on a train ride there, he walked. He was exhausted.
Could he pull it off?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
He said? He went to run and his legs wouldn't move.
He felt like he was running in mud and seemen,
and all of a sudden he noticed people starting to
pass you. Eventually he made it through six laps before
he finally collapsed from malnutrition and.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Exhaustion.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Wow, but at least he made it, and at least
he ran the race.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
That's right, you mentioned Harvard.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
The people back home in Colorado couldn't really deny his
first his athletic ability, and they couldn't deny his intelligence.
Talk about how intelligent Dolphus was.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yes, interestingly enough, and when I first began to understand this,
though I didn't know the story of my family, be
quite honest with you, which is really an unfortunate thing
as for many of US African Americans and even others.
But growing up, you know, at the time, Oakland, California
had one of the highest crime rates in the country.
So we were on welfare with my four younger sisters
(09:34):
and my mom. Unfortunately, she had part of the family
from my grandfather's side.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Had passed.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
It had received some sort of ailment, and they eventually
thought it was originally schizophrenia or some forth. They'd also
found out it was Huntingston's disease, and because of that,
I never knew my family's story because my mom was
not always coherent and I couldn't understand half of what
she's saying, whether it was true or not, and so
forth as a kid. So consequently, I didn't know about
(10:08):
this until I was in Colorado Springs and I got
a phone call from my aunt Lulu there at the
Air Force Academy. And so that's when she had asked me.
She goes, so, how's it going to the Air Force Academy.
I've been trying to reach her for the last three days,
And I said, yeah, I was in survival training.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
She goes, so how did it go?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And I said, well, I won at all the cadets,
I got the top oars and she goes, what else
are you doing? So I said, I'm on a gymnastics team,
and so forth. She goes, do you know where that
comes from? And I had no idea what she meant
by that. She goes, do you know about your grandfather
of Tandy and the history of dolphics here in Colorado Springs?
And that's when I began to understand just how prolific
(10:43):
both of them were as athletes, as scholar athletes, Tandy
graduating number two, Dolphins graduating number one, And so I said, Okay,
there's something going on here. It isn't just them, Katie.
Their father was raised, was born and raised on the
Texas Plan Tape up until age nineteen. Then they made
(11:04):
it to Indian Territory where he married a Creek Nation
Indian lady by the name of Lulu McGee, my great grandmother.
But while he was there he helped build Langston University.
He attended Langston University. He's study under the tutelage of
an attorney, and so we went to Colorado Springs. But
the children would tell us later was that they were
(11:28):
happy to go to school because the tests in school
were so much easier than their father Kd's. So that
is really where it came from. He believed in education.
He tied it to the children. He forced them to
read books. They had encyclopedias, they had a piano, they
had prime bone, they had a violin in the house.
And so I think it came from a lot of that.
He had two older siblings who I'm certain also passed
(11:51):
on knowledge to him as well. As he prepared to
enter into high school. But he was super He was
just super gifted.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah, like I said, your family is fascinating. Just to
make sure for clarification, Dolphus had a brother, Tandy, that's.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Where you're referring to. That was my great grandfather.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Okay, yeah, yeah, So so they were so Tandy was
Dolphice's younger brother, and they they competed. They really in
the classroom and on the field. In fact, a couple
of years after that race, Tandy was winning the Denver
Marathon and he collapsed less than a mile and a
half from the finish line, and and and Dolphics was
(12:33):
right behind him, of course, and and uh and Dolphins
went to help him. He goes, no, make sure a
shop wins the race. I'll be okay uh. And they
found him at the hospital several hours later. But Dolphins
ended up winning that race against media, the people he
had competed against in the Olympics. So so yes, the
family story is as I as I got to learn
more about it, and I spent time with my grandfather
when he was eighty three. I spent some time back
(12:56):
in California where he was living at the time when
I was in pilot training, and that's when he began
to tell me a lot more of the stories.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
What was it in them?
Speaker 1 (13:04):
You mentioned their parents, But to make them fight and
hold on to have a place in this world, it
couldn't have been easy.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
I know it wasn't easy, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
In fact, what Nina told us, So Nina is we
call her the professor of the of the family, Nina
because her her real name was number nine is what
they originally called her, because they couldn't keep up with
all these kids. So she was the ninth of the
eleven children. And so she was in California. She was
a dad junct professor at UC Berkeley, and she was
(13:39):
the first black teacher public teacher in Colorado Springs School District.
And so she kept a lot of the history of
the family that I later found out about. And she
said that to the parents that Lulu and Katie would
force the kids to be competitive and so, and they
wanted that for them because they knew how difficult it
was going to be for them when they went outside
(14:01):
of the family in a prominently white, almost all white
elementary school Bristol School and now well Colorado Springs High School,
Palmer High School. Now, so that's the way they prepared them.
They make sure they are very competitive. They forced the
older children to teach the younger children, and they every
(14:22):
day at the dinner table, Katie would say, Okay, who
had the smartest event in class today? And they would
all kind of vibe for Okay, I did this or
I learned this or whatever it was. So it was
a lot of internal rivalry.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
You know, I think about, you know, black, a black
family in Colorado, it just seems very unique. But talk
about the roots from Africa. How did they even get
to Colorado.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yes, so this part of the story is it's actually
just so fascinating, and I confirmed it through my own
DNA analysis with twenty three in me as I was
trying to really piece together everything. So my father's side
of the family is from Nigeria, the Shines, the Strouds
are from Ghana. And in eighteen forty two, an African
(15:17):
girl was born believing Georgia to the Stroud plantation there
and they separated her from her parents and ultimately she
ended up on what was called Pleasant Retreat. It's actually
in the Library of Congress associated with June tenth as
a seminole event. On June tenth that Stroud Plantation in
(15:40):
Limestone County, Texas is where she grew up and was
born in eighteen forty two in Georgia, and she apparently
created a lot of incidents. She was very strong willed,
and at one point they beat her quite extensively and
she had scars on her back, and their stories in
(16:00):
the family about the head of the household, the young
lady who had done this. But the plantation owner, Mandred,
had an affair with the Tewaukane Indian Native American Indian,
and nine months later, this child shows up on the
(16:22):
doorstep at the plantation, at the big house, and everybody's
wondering what's going on, and he had to confess about
the affair he had to his wife, and so they
ostracized this kid, and so he lived with primarily live
with the slaves, with the Africans. And when he grew older,
and this was by now right around eighteen sixty five
(16:46):
time period, he wanted to marry that young lady, the
African slave Kimball, my great great grandmother, And so that's
kind of the story of how things happened. Because of
all the racism and all the violence there, Mandred then
decided I'm going to move you guys. He'd called it
out of the country to Indian Territory, because Indian Territory
(17:08):
was considered, you know, a different country, right, So he
helped them move to Indian Territory. And that's where dolphins
then begin to thrive under the tutelage of the professors
and the teachers there at Langston University.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Wow, we are speaking with Frank Shines, a descendant of
the incredible Stroud family, a black family that fought hard
to overcome the obstacles of racism. In fact, Dolphus Stroud
in nineteen twenty eight made it to the Olympic trials,
but he had to get there, and of course they
wouldn't pay a black man's transportation across the country, so
(17:47):
he walked two thousand miles. I wanted to ask you
how did he get back to Colorado after participation.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
That's a great question. You know, almost no one ever
asked that question. They always thought what happened? They don't
know what happened? And that was it, right, I give
him the cliffhanger. Oh, you arrived there six hours before.
This was the most fascinating thing he talked about in
his notes how he was hallucinating even during at different
points during the walk out during the march, the journey
(18:15):
out to out from Colorado to Cambridge, and he said that,
you know, before he finally fainted during the sixth lap,
he said that he just thought, maybe I can make it,
and then he fainted, and then he said he woke
up and he was talking to this guy, Joey Ray. Now,
Joey Ray was the seminal long distance runner of the time,
(18:38):
had won all of these great world championships, and everyone
knew about Joey Ray. Well, he was talking to this gentleman.
He wasn't sure who it was, and this gentleman asked him, well,
tell me your story. How'd you get here? And you know,
I saw what happened back there. He had just assumed,
apparently that this gentleman had spoken with him right after
the race. It literally was two hours later, because Joey
(18:59):
Ray found out later his race was two hours later
on the same track. So dolphins must have laid there
just completely out of it. And so when he later
looked at these envelope, there's an envelope that Joey Ray
had left him. And only then he did he understand
that this was the great racer runner, Joey Ray. And
there was an envelope and it said, I understand. You
(19:21):
know you didn't have a plan for getting back. You
only thought about getting here. Called this gentleman or reach
out to the executive director of the White MCA in Boston,
and that's how he was able to spend the summer
working at restaurants. They gave him lodging. He made a
boatload of money, according to him, he bought a suit
(19:42):
and he was able to afford a first class train
trip back home. So that's how he ultimately returned back
to Colorado.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Into a blaze of glory.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
And was Joey Ray black or white?
Speaker 2 (19:53):
He was a white gentleman.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yes, you know.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
There is a photo that I saw on your website
of the family, all vintage. They're dressed in the nines.
They look wealthy, crowd determined. Do you know which photo
I'm referring to as the.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Iconic its iconic at nineteen twenty nine photo that was
actually requested from w the Boys for the Crisis magazine,
and so they sent out a photographer because they heard
about the family. But they also heard that during that
time this Black family was flourishing because Katie Strout had
figured out a way to create a trucking company to
(20:34):
do to haul ash and also to pick up garbage.
So they created the first kind of subscription for dumps
and trash. They're in the color Rail Springs area, and
that's why the family was successful for that short period
of time before unfortunately, Katie came down with lackcoman. At
that time, they didn't have any way to cure it,
(20:55):
so he became blind. But yeah, that was the story
behind that iconic nine twenty nine photo.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Beautiful photo. Your family is incredible.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
As I've said, there are so many relatives that you
have and so many tangents and other stories.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
That's enough to do a documentary, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yes, it is, And that's exactly what we're doing right now.
It's called Running to Harvard. And I've got a great crew,
Award winning crew cinematographer Kyle Hatchet. We got Mike pak
who's the historian photographer, a longtime friend of the family
and great friend of all of Colorado Springs and Denver.
And then the executive director, Ralph Michael Jerdonald who's created
(21:40):
many film festivals and other events and just a great
filmmaker in his own right.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Rag about yourself just a little bit more. You mentioned
something about flight school. What's your background?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yes, my background, as I mentioned earlier by Hooker Crook,
me and my older my two younger twin sisters. They
ended up dying prematurely, as did my father. My mother
for the reasons that we talked about earlier associated with
her health. But somehow my older sister and I we
made it out of the hood at that time because
(22:14):
the way things were in California, my mother automatically received
custody of us, so my father finally came back into
our lives. We moved up to Washington State when I
was thirteen years old, went to school there, and then
I just began to flourish academically as well as athletically.
Was on a gymnastics team, captain Honor Society. I was
(22:38):
a vocal jazz and cellist and got to travel around
competing in all of those different types of extracurricular activities.
And because of that, the Air Force Academy ultimately gave
me a presidential appointment to the Air Force Academy. I
went there, learned to fly, studied management, and engineering, and
(23:01):
met the Tuskegee Airman and a number of other great people,
whether it was the Kissingers or some of the presidents
and vice presidents. It was just amazing experience the four
years there, and was the captain and MVP of the
gymnastics team, and so part of the reason Lulu was
really curious was because she was trying to help me
(23:22):
understand the connection between Dophis who had this aspiration for
the nineteen twenty eight Olympics and here we are more
than sixty years later, and I was competing in training
against Olympic gymnasts there at the Air Force Academy and
the Olympic Training Center. So that's my background. I went
on to pilot training in Arizona and then went on
(23:45):
to work with the military doing management engineering, which is
kind of a combination of industrial engineering and management consulting,
and the military sent me to school, covered seventy five
percent of all my graduate studies, and since then on
to travel around the world working with IBM and Ernst
and Young lived in Brazil for over a year and
(24:06):
it's just been a really great experience and I can
only thank the family and the support of a lot
of coaches and teachers, many of them black along the way,
who believed in me and then later began to understand,
you know, how to believe in myself. I understood more
about our family history and what.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
A history it is. And you were recently reunited with
a sister.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yes, oh boy, you've done your research. So yeah, this
is kind of emotional. I apologize. But when we were
separated from my mother, my mother had a young daughter, Margaret,
and had just become pregnant with a younger sibling, a son.
(24:53):
Her son would have been my younger brother, but we
never met them because we are separated. And so Margaret,
who we knew at age two, we searched everywhere, Me
and my sister searched after we graduated from high school
and college, and we just could not find out what
had happened to Margaret. And about three years ago she
(25:16):
was looking she found Stroud family. She saw another iconic
photo of Lulu Stroud, of a little baby sitting in
a chair, and someone, one of her friends says, that
kid looks just like you, and you're a little baby.
She goes, no, I don't think so. And she looked
around and she saw my name and saw shines and
she goes, I think this may be my family, and
(25:36):
so I got an email and I gave her a
phone call. We started talking and sure enough her name
had been changed with Lisa, but the little two year
old Margaret. Forty four years later, I got her on
a plane to show up for the opening of Race
the Opera, which we performed there in Colorado Springs at
(25:57):
the Pioneers Museum. Tended that to a sold out audience.
She was sitting right in the front and we opened
and provided the whole backdrop for an African slave who
had this vision to write a song called Anthem of Heaven,
and now it's being featured as part of Race the Opera,
(26:19):
and some of that music will be included in the documentary.
So yeah, that's how we were reunited forty four years later.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Now your family also has the honor of having a
display at Colorado College. That must be great and certainly
another proun moment for the Stroud family.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Yes it is.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
And I got a phone call just before COVID in
December of twenty nineteen, and it was the president of
Colorado College. She knew of the work I had been
doing as a as a family historian and invited me
as well as a number of other people out, and
(27:03):
they didn't really explain what was going to happen, and
then we were met with the press and all the
honors around what was What they created was just called
the Stroud Scholars and we've since have brought in well,
I guess four different cohorts of children, I shouldn't call
them children, young adults from high school all the way
(27:23):
up through college level through the program, and that first
cohort is now in their sophomore year in colleges around
the country. And then they also dedicated the VIP floor,
the fourth floor of the Ropes and Arena, a new
arena that was created in Colorado Springs on the campus.
They dedicated that to Dophice and the family as well.
(27:47):
So it was a pretty powerful series of days and
events that took place.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
How can people learn more about your fascinating family? Just
so many layers, it's just amazing. And when will the
documentary be revealed?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
The documentary will be revealed later this year, and right
now we are on target for it happening just before
the Olympics in July. Knock on wood and the best
way to reach us is just go to running too
Harvard dot com. Or if you want to look at
Stroud Family of Colorado, just search Stroud Family Colorado. You'll
(28:27):
see our website come up Stroudfamilycolorado dot com or running
to Harvard dot com.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
And finally, what's the message you want our people to
take away from your family's story?
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, I didn't see people like me in the textbooks.
I didn't see people like me in most of the
prestigious positions growing up in Oakland, California. I believe you
know it was excited about the Apollo Mission. I had
no idea that Jack Stroud, my great uncle, was the
(29:02):
gentleman who wrote the formulas to safely return astronauts from
the Moon to Earth. So how many other hidden figures
are out there that we don't know of? My hope
is there are two questions I often get when I
talk about the family, go out in public speaking and
so forth. One is, Wow, what an incredible family. But
the other is, how did you do the background in
research to find your family? On the Shinne side of
(29:23):
the family, we can't find hardly anything. We've been lucky
on the stro outside of the family that We've had
some great people, so the message would be believe in
all of us. The stories that are out there are incredible,
and I wish everyone well and hope that perhaps in
a small way, we're in a presidential election year when
(29:44):
an Olympic year. My hope is that perhaps this untold
Olympic story might just help to heal our nation as well,
because we certainly need to find a way to work
together better and reduce to polarization.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Thank you as we celebrate blos History Month. This is
black history we need to know. Frank Shein's producer of
the documentary Running to Harvard, Thank you for keeping this
legacy alive. Next time on Blackland with Vanessa Tyler, what
is it about true crime that has us hooked? We're
going in to solve that mystery. You have to hear this.
(30:20):
I talk with the sister who calls herself the longest
living Jane Doe.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
And it's taken me over twenty years of searching for
my true I getian to discover that I Will been
missing for well over fifty years. They were on the
impression that I was psychologically unvalid.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
On the next Blackland with Vanessa Tyler,
Host
Vanessa Tyler
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.