Sarah Rector was born on March 3, 1902, in Muskogee, Oklahoma, into a family whose history reached back to slavery. Her maternal grandmother and paternal great-grandfather had been enslaved by Muskogee Creek Indians, and after the Civil War, when slavery was abolished, her ancestors were declared freedmen by the U. S. government and made citizens of the tribes that had once held them in bondage.
In the decades that followed, federal policy reshaped the land of Indian Territory. The Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887 stripped Native Americans of land that the government considered excess, dividing it and transferring it free of charge to white settlers. Then, in 1898, Congress passed the Curtis Act, which amended the Dawes Act and set the stage for Oklahoma to become a state. Under this legislation, the unassigned lands of Indian Territory were distributed not only to white settlers but also to tribal members residing in the area.
Because of her lineage as a descendant of Creek slaves and her status as a freedman, Sarah and two of her siblings each received a plot of land. Sarah’s allotment was roughly 160 acres. Between 1898 and 1906, nearly a million acres in eastern Oklahoma were granted to children of the Creek Nation, including around 4,400 Black children and thousands of Muskogee freedmen. In total, the Curtis Act stripped tribes of about 90 million acres.
The land given to tribal members such as Sarah was often considered undesirable—rocky, infertile, and unsuitable for farming—while the more valuable parcels were reserved for white settlers. But the government had not foreseen what lay beneath much of the land given to the younger generations: extremely valuable fossil fuel. Sarah’s allotment sat in Glenpool, about sixty miles from her family home. Her family was poor, and her father, Joseph Rector, struggled to afford the thirty-dollar annual property tax on the land.
He petitioned the Muskogee County court to sell it, but because Sarah was still a minor, the request was denied. Joseph kept paying, and the burden weighed heavily on the family. In February 1911, Joseph reached an agreement with Standard Oil, leasing Sarah’s land and finally relieving the family of the financial strain. Two years later, B.
B. Jones, an independent oil driller known as the millionaire oilman, drilled a well on the property that produced a gusher. Crude oil was discovered, and within months, tens of thousands of barrels were being produced each day. Oklahoma law at the time required that all children who were citizens of Indian Territory with significant property and money be assigned white guardians, even if their parents were alive.
Sarah began receiving a fortune in royalties, and local calls soon arose to change her guardianship to comply with the law. A judge appointed T. J. Porter, a local white resident known to the family, to oversee all of Sarah’s financial affairs.
News of the discovery spread across the nation. At just eleven years old, Sarah Rector was said to be earning thousands of dollars a month. One account recorded that in October 1913 alone, she received royalties of $11,500. In that same year, the Oklahoma legislature went so far as to make an effort to have her declared white so she could ride in a first-class car on trains.
Newspapers reported that her income exceeded that of the president and that she had become known as the richest Black girl in America. Yet despite her massive income, rumors persisted that she continued to live in a two-room shack with her large family, still impoverished. People began to question what was happening to her wealth. In 1914, the Chicago Defender, a prominent African American newspaper, published an article claiming that Sarah and her siblings were uneducated, lived in poor conditions, and that her wealth was being mismanaged.
The article caught the attention of influential African Americans who became concerned about her guardianship. An investigation was launched. In June, a memo from James C. Waters Jr.
, an agent affiliated with the NAACP, reached W. E. B. Du Bois.
Waters detailed that Sarah’s estate was indeed being mismanaged. According to him, she received no education, wore cheap dresses, and had no shoes, while her guardian earned a large sum of money. He asked whether it was not possible to have her cared for in a decent manner by people of her own race, instead of by a member of a race that would deny her the treatment accorded a good yard dog. Papers across the country took up the matter, challenging the position of Sarah’s guardian and highlighting similar cases.
Hundreds of Native Black children had found wealth through oil discoveries on their land and, like Sarah, had been assigned white guardians who frequently mismanaged their estates. Why, the papers asked, was it not possible for a Black guardian to be appointed? Sarah’s case became the focal point. The exact details of her situation remain unclear.
Shortly after the press raised the issue, correspondence between Du Bois and a judge revealed that Sarah and her family had moved into a five-room cottage and that she was attending school in Taft along with her siblings. The judge said the family itself had chosen Porter as guardian and that he received only two percent of Sarah’s income. White-owned papers also stated that the judge was strict with guardians if any discrepancies occurred. Even if the situation had been exaggerated, the NAACP’s investigation brought to light the real issues of guardianship and corruption surrounding it.
Du Bois later established the Children’s Department of the NAACP, which investigated claims of white guardians suspected of depriving Black children of their land and wealth. Sarah and her older sister left school in Taft and received a better education at the Tuskegee Institute’s children’s school. While there, a group of criminals plotted to kidnap her and demand a ransom. Fortunately, students prevented the abduction.
Her wealth made her a frequent target for violence and exploitation, which may be why she stayed away from the press in later life. In 1915, production on Sarah’s allotment reached about 160,000 barrels of crude oil a month. With a one-eighth share, she earned about $18,000 a month, roughly $460,000 at the time. The average household income then was less than sixty dollars a month.
Her daily income exceeded the annual salary of most Americans. Because of the immense press coverage, Sarah received gifts, requests for loans, and marriage proposals from much older men, even though she was still a teenager. In 1917, the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and within a few years they settled into a beautiful brick mansion that became known as the Sarah Rector mansion. By the time Sarah was eighteen, she was easily a millionaire, owning stocks, a boarding house, land, and other businesses.
Her mother, known as Mama Rose, managed her finances until she turned twenty. In Kansas City, Sarah met a local businessman named Kenneth Campbell, and the couple married in 1920 in a private ceremony attended only by close relatives. They had three sons and divorced in 1930. By March 1922, Sarah’s wealth was estimated at over one million dollars, equivalent to around $15.
5 million today. She lived comfortably, enjoyed fine clothing, and some designer stores that typically admitted only whites would close their doors to allow the Rectors to shop. She and her mother drove Cadillacs, Lincolns, and Rolls-Royces, and were known to race around the city, with Sarah especially accumulating speeding tickets. She hosted grand parties at her home for leading members of the African American community, including jazz celebrities, yet she is thought to have lived a quiet life in Kansas City, with details of her later years hard to come by.
Sarah lost a great deal of money following the Wall Street crash of 1929, particularly after a car dealership she and her husband had created the year before went bust. After her divorce, she married William Crawford, a restaurant owner, in 1934. Sarah Rector died on July 22, 1967, at the age of sixty-five, from a cerebral hemorrhage.
She was buried in Taft Cemetery, in her hometown.