Historically, racism has managed to create a well-functioning system to perpetuate ideas of race superiority and oppression towards those considered inferior to them. Their backward and insistent narrative has even taken them to resort to legal shenanigans to maintain their speech and benefit from it.
One of the greatest examples of this hypocrisy and nonsensical laws is the case of Sarah Rector, a young black girl deemed by the press and society as the “Richest Colored Girl in the World, ” and who was eventually declared white so she could be a member of society. Who was this girl, and how did she become one of the richest people in the early-20th-century US?
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Who was Sarah Rector?
Sarah Rector was born in 1902 to a freed black couple, Rose McQueen and Joseph Rector. She was born in an almost all-black town called Taft in Oklahoma, a land that was considered at the time an Indian Territory. Her grandparents had been enslaved by Creek Indians and freed after the Civil War.
Sarah had five siblings and although they lived in relatively good conditions, they weren’t a wealthy family that could just start a millionaire business. What changed Sarah and the Rector’s life overall was a stroke of luck if you may say. In 1887, the state declared the Dawes Allotment Act, which established that all Creek Freedmen minors had to be granted land. This was an irrevocable law so that Oklahoma could be integrated into US territory. As a consequence of that Act, around 600 children received land, ad Sarah was granted almost 160 acres.
Growing a fortune
Of course, there was a trick in this Act, and black children were simply granted the worst parts of the land; generally rocky and infertile soil so the good allotments could be granted to white settlers and distinctive members of the Indian tribe as it had been agreed upon. Assuming that, Sarah’s acres seemed to be useless; little they everybody know, there was actually an oil field worth a fortune.
Part of the trick also included an annual payment of property tax of about 30 dollars; money Sarah’s family didn’t have to spare. Without being able to farm and make some profit from the land, Sarah’s father, Joseph, petitioned the Muskogee County Court to be able to sell the land. The petition was denied, and he was forced to keep paying the property tax, still without knowing that land was literally a fortune fountain. After finding out there was oil in the parcel, and trying to make some money out of it, Joseph decided to lease the parcel to an oil company in 1911.
In 1913, an independent driller, B.B. Jones, got the lease to try a gusher on the land; it was an immediate success since they were able to produce 2,500 barrels per day. That same year, Sarah was making over $300 a day, which has been estimated to be around $8,000 today. Naturally, an 11-year-old black girl making that amount of money a day became news all over the country, and tabloids would write all sorts of things about her.
Young ‘white’ millionaire?
Sarah Rector became an extremely famous personality all over the country and some places in the world. She would start receiving gifts, requests from loans, and even marriage proposals, some of them by german men, according to the tabloid press. But, as we mentioned at the beginning, the hypocrisy of racism would soon make its appearance.
At that time, it was required by law that all Native Americans and Black citizens from Indian Territories with relatively significant property and wealth had to be assigned a ‘well-respected’ white guardian to be able to keep making business. When Sarah’s popularity grew, her parents were forced to give up their guardianship status to a white man named T.J. Porter. This raised all sorts of concerns among the Black community who believed this man would rip Sarah off her fortune. But will go back to this in a moment.
Besides the white guardianship, given the amount of her wealth, in 1913 the Oklahoma Legislature decided to declare her as a white person in an attempt to keep her business in the territory. To make it more noticeable for her, they promised this move would elevate her social status, and was going to be able to ride on first-class cars on trains as if it would mend a lifetime of discrimination. Still, after being declared white, Sarah Rector was fully accepted into the elite circles of Oklahoma.
Public attention and tabloids
Now, as mentioned, as Sarah’s wealth kept growing, so did her fame. In 1914, an African American Journal called The Chicago Defender, published a set of articles on Sarah Rector and her fortune after her name was becoming more and more popular. Rumors even claimed that she was a white immigrant girl that was being kept in poverty. Wanting to have the real scoop on Sarah, the Defender published an article claiming that she was an uneducated girl dressed in rags raised by ignorant parents who had given a white man all rights to her state. This raised concerns throughout the Black community including the recently formed NAACP, who became interested in assuring her guardian wouldn’t rip her off her fortune.
This ended up not being true entirely but Sarah and her siblings were soon sent to school in Taft. They moved to a modern cottage with five bedrooms and owned a car. Still, Sarah’s case was so big that it inspired the creation of the Children’s Department of the NAACP to investigate and protect children from white guardians being ripped off their land and wealth.
When Sarah was 18 years old, she had a fortune estimated at $1 million, the equivalent of $11 million today. She was the owner of stocks and bonds, a boarding house, a restaurant in Oklahoma, a bakery, and around 2,000 acres of land. Wanting to change her life, she left Tuskegee where she had been studying and moved with her family to Kansas City in Missouri. She bought a big house, that became known as the Rector Mansion, and all in all, things were looking great for the Rector family.
When she was 20 years old, Sarah married Kenneth Campbell; he was known to be the second Black man in the US to own an auto dealership. The couple had three children and though over a decade of marriage enjoyed the status of being local royalty. They had a lavish life and were part of the elite of the time. But things didn’t work out for them In 1930, they divorced, and four years later Sarah got married for a second time.
Losing her fortune
Despite the wealth and businesses Sarah and her family ran, the Great Depression would take a toll on her fortune making her lose almost all her wealth. She never managed to recover all that wealth, though she lived comfortably for the rest of her life until the age of 65. She died on July 22, 1967, and she only had some oil wells working and some real estate holdings.
