By Don Valentine
In 1913 an allotment of Oklahoma land made 11-year old Sarah Rector rich! This serendipity came from the ‘Dawes Allotment Act” of 1887. Natives and their descendents were entitled to land allotments under the Treaty of 1866 made by the United States with the “Five Civilized Tribes” of the Oklahoma Territory.
Black Past chronicles her ascent, “Sarah Rector was born in 1902 near the all-Black town of Taft…” This was Indian Territory, and the Rectors were listed as freedmen on the Dawes Rolls. “They were entitled to land allotments and Sarah Rector was allotted 159.14 acres…”
National Public Radio member KDGU interviewed Anita Arnold of Oklahoma City’s Black Liberated Arts Center, “The land they gave to Sarah was so sandy and rocky, her father just despaired because nothing would grow on it.” This was an untenable situation, because her Dad had to pay taxes of $30 a year. Anita continued, “‘He signed a lease with an oil company and that’s when they found all this oil. She had one of the largest oil pools on her property ever, and so she went basically from rags to riches overnight”
In Tonya Bolden’s book, Searching for Sarah Rector: The Richest Black Girl in America,“ An independent driller struck oil that started bringing in 2,500 barrels or 105,000 gallons per day. Rector, still being the owner of the land, began earning more than $300 a day (the equivalent of about $7,500 a day in our time).”
Sarah’s situation was pristine for nefarious cretins. A series of articles published in, The Chicago Defender prompted a number of notable Black activists to intervene including W. E. B. DuBois. The galvanizing of our Black community protected her from malcontents. She enrolled at the Children’s House, a boarding school for teenagers at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Black Past reported, “When Rector turned eighteen on March 3, 1920, she left Tuskegee and her entire family moved with her to Kansas City, Missouri. By this point Rector, who now owned stocks and bonds, a boarding house and bakery and the Busy Bee Café in Muskogee, Oklahoma, as well as 2,000 acres of prime river bottomland, was a millionaire.” Sarah was lucky in life and lucky in love. “In 1922, she married Kenneth Campbell, the second African American to own an auto dealership. The couple had three sons and were recognized as local royalty, driving expensive cars and entertaining elites like Joe Louis, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie at their home.”
The Great Depression hit Sarah hard, and she spent the rest of her life in middle class wealth. Just another piece of “Lost Black History!”
