On January 15, 1914, an unusual headline appeared on the pages of The Kansas City Star: “Oil made pickaninny rich – Oklahoma girl with $15,000 a month gets many proposals – four white men in Germany want to marry the Negro child that they might share her fortune”.
Sarah Rector, an African American from the Muskogee tribe, located in Oklahoma, became famous as the “Richest Colored Girl in the world.”
Sarah was born on March 3, 1902. From her parents, Joseph and Rose, the girl inherited a plot of land that later made Sarah one of the first African-American millionaires in the United States.
Due to the Treaty of 1866, the family had the right to own land. However, the land that was provided to former slaves was usually unfit for agricultural work as fertile lands were meant for white settlers. Another problem faced by the girl’s family was the payment of property tax, which was $ 30 per year. At some point, the girl’s father wanted to sell the land, because he could not afford to pay for it, but fortunately for Sarah, Muskogee district court rejected his petition.
Then he decided to lease a share of the Sarah site to the Standard Oil Company. As it turned out later, such a decision was correct — in 1913 an independent oil driller B. B. Jones dug a well from which allowed producing 2,500 barrels of oil a day. Little Sarah began to receive $ 300 a day (more than $ 7,000, today’s money), and her guardian was a white man named TJ Porter, who personally knew Sarah’s family.
By the time she turned 18, Sarah had already become a millionaire and moved with her family to Kansas City, Missouri. In Kansas, Sarah married and gave birth to three sons: Kenneth Jr., Leonard, and Clarence.
Sarah knew how to enjoy her wealth, and loved spending money on clothes and cars.
Sarah Rector died at the age of 65 on July 22, 1967.
