The First Generation
1910: K.D. and Lulu
Reverend Kimbal Dolphus Stroud, pastor, teacher, Langston University graduate, appreciated living in Oklahoma territory. His wife, Lulu, was a member of the Creek Indian tribe and minorities had opportunities not often found elsewhere. But when Oklahoma became a state in 1907, segregation moved in. This was not the future K.D. wanted for his children.
It was time to move. K.D. had heard that a young town to the northwest, founded by a Quaker general in 1871, had integrated schools and equal opportunities for all. The Stroud family, which now included four children, arrived in Colorado Springs in May of 1910.
But sadly, William Jackson Palmer, champion of equality for all people, had died in 1909. And as daughter Lulu Stroud observed in writing local history, “Once Palmer died, things went downhill fast.”
With ten years of experience, K.D. inquired about a teaching job. It was out of the question. Colorado Springs had never had a black teacher in any of its schools and would not have one until 1954. (That first black teacher was Nina Stroud, KD’s ninth child.)
K.D. answered a help-wanted ad at the post office. Out of many applicants tested, K.D. scored the highest with a 98%, but a white person got the job.
His family was growing – he had to do something. The only job he could get was shoveling coal for the Rock Island Railroad in Roswell, five miles north of town. He walked to work every day, seven days a week, and worked ten hours a day, shoveling coal from the 60 ton railroad cars into coal chutes. He was paid by how much he shoveled each day – seven cents per ton.
The Strouds rented a small home at 810 North Walnut Street on the west side of town. A short distance away at 944 North Walnut, the street expanded into a park-like estate owned by the heirs of J.J. Hagerman, who’d made a fortune in Colorado gold and silver mines, railroads and banking. The Stroud children often worked for Elinor Lewellyn, the granddaughter of Hagerman. Knowing they often did not have enough to eat, she allowed them to use part of her land to grow food for themselves.
Every evening on his way home from the coal mines, K.D. would pick up the city’s daily newspaper. The family gathered in the living room and each child would read from the newspaper. The oldest would read the front-page story, pass the paper to the next, until it got to the youngest who would read the comics aloud to the others. The family had no money to buy books, but K.D. checked out classics from the library, and every evening they would listen to a chapter from the world’s best literature. Daughter Nina recalls how with no one having any exposure to French, they mispronounced words in Les Miserables, but it didn’t matter. The plot, the characters, the thoughts of Victor Hugo found a home in their curious minds.
After eight years, KD had saved enough money to buy a horse and wagon. He used it to haul baggage, trash, ashes, gravel, and fertilizer. By the late 1920s, he bought trucks, formed the Stroud Brothers Trucking Company, and started the first contracted regular trash hauling service in the city. Reverend Stroud was able to return to preaching, serving St. John’s and Trinity Baptist churches. He became active in politics and spoke out against discrimination.
His eleven children, brilliant and talented, went on to careers in business, science and the arts. Fourth son and mathematician Jack, was part of the Apollo I team that put the first man on the moon.
The Second Generation
1928: Dolphus
The attitudes that had kept K.D. back still existed. Dolphus, one of Jack’s older brothers attended the integrated city high school but was not allowed on the track team. He became a premier distance runner on his own and practiced by jogging up and down Pikes Peak.
Dolphus graduated from high school with honors in 1925. In 1927 he entered Colorado College, joined the track team, and in March 1928 set a record the fastest round trip of Pikes Peak—two hours and fifty-three minutes.
In June of 1928 he competed in the 5000-meter marathon in Denver, first step to the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. Dolphus was glad to hear that the first place winner would be given an all expense paid trip to Boston where the Amsterdam Olympics qualifying round would be held. He knew he could win, and he knew if he didn’t he’d never be able to afford the travel expenses. He wasn’t worried and he took first place easily, but at the end of the race, he found out there would be no travel award after all. No explanation was ever given, but the outcome was clear. The cross-country bus full of eager hopefuls would have no black passenger on board.
Dolphus refused to let his Olympic dream die. At 4 AM on June 25, with a canteen for water, a golf club for protection and a ten-dollar bill in his pocket, he set out to hitchhike the 1475 miles to Boston. Milk at twelve cents a quart, peanuts at two cents a pack provided the bulk of his nourishment. He journeyed across Nebraska heading toward Chicago. The Model T’s were few and far between and many hours would go by before he’d even see a car. It was hot. He had to ration his water carefully.
In Chicago, Dolphus found that newspapers had printed his story and encouraged drivers to pick up this young black runner. Though he got more rides, the grueling trip had taken 13 days and he did not reach Boson until six hours before the race on July 7.
He had paper work to fill out, his muscles ached, and he was weak from a lack of food and sleep. He’d saved an extra pair of shoes for the race, but his feet were so swollen and blistered, he could barely get them on. Though he’d given it his best, Dolphus collapsed after six laps into the race.
Dolphus worked in a restaurant for the rest of the summer to earn money for the train ticket home. Back at Colorado College, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated cum laude in 1931. After teaching at a college in Georgia, he applied for a teaching position at Colorado College, his alma mater. He was turned down, but offered a job as a janitor.
He became a successful businessman, husband and father and passed away in 1975 at the age of 68. He was inducted into the Colorado College Athletic Hall of Fame in 2006, 31 years after his death.
The Third Generation
2019: Carl
Bobby, the youngest Stroud daughter, graduated from Colorado College in 1944. For her final she composed and played a boogie-woogie piece for the organ, a first. In addition to her professional career as a composer and musician, she and her husband Albert Bourgeois raised seven children.
The family kept in touch with Elinor Hagerman Llewellyn, the heiress next door. As an adult, Bobby became Elinor’s private music instructor, and Bobby’s children continued to visit the estate just as she and her siblings had done.
After Elinor’s death in 1994, the estate fell into disrepair and the 8.7 acres went wild and weedy with unpaid taxes and neighborhood complaints.
Bobby’s son, Carl Bourgeois, founded Civil Technology Incorporated in 1989 in Denver, Colorado. Specializing in construction management and real estate development, his company successfully revitalized one of Denver’s most blighted urban communities, the historic black neighborhood of Five Points. His success brought the company recognition, including Business of the Year awards and the Martin Luther King Social Responsibility award.
In 2016 Carl turned his sights to his grandfather’s neighborhood in Colorado Springs, where his mother and her siblings had struggled to survive. Carl purchased the Hagerman property that he had sadly watched deteriorate over the years. The two-story house has been rebuilt in its original style, preserving historic accuracy to the highest degree, and the cleanup of the surrounding property is near completion. Thanks to the efforts of the grandson of a pastor who persevered in the face of poverty and discrimination, the beautiful century-old estate will once again contribute to the betterment of the neighborhood and the city.
There is a wisdom tradition in the black culture, a bit of mother wit, passed on in word and deed. Certainly the Strouds held it in their hearts and expressed it through their accomplishments: Be strong. Life is about “Making a way when there is no way.”
Many thanks to Juanita Stroud Martin, another third-generation Stroud, for providing information and validation to these accounts of her grandfather, father, and cousin.
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Lucy Bell’s 35-year teaching career included over twenty years as a writing consultant. Her latest book, Coming Up, A Boy’s Adventures in 1940s Colorado Springs, combines narrative non-fiction with the history of the black community of Colorado Springs. It features rare historical photographs and the watercolor illustrations of Linda Martin. Release date: October 14, 2018. Her children’s novel, Molly and the Cat Who Stole Her Tongue, published in 2016, is available at Poor Richard’s Bookstore, Colorado Springs and Amazon.
