Sarah Rector
Early life
Sarah Rector was born in 1902 near the all-black town of Taft, located in the eastern portion of Oklahoma, in what was then Indian Territory. She had five siblings. Her parents, Joseph Rector and his wife, Rose McQueen (both born 1881) were African descendants of the Muscogee Creek Nation Creek Indians before the Civil War and which became part of the Muscogee Creek Nation after the Treaty of 1866. As such, they and their descendants were listed as freedmen on the Dawes Rolls, by which they were entitled to land allotments under the Treaty of 1866 made by the United States with the Five Civilized Tribes.
Consequently, nearly 600 black children, or Muscogee Freedmen minors as they were called, were granted land allotments, and Sarah Rector was allotted 159.14 acres (64 hectares). This was a mandatory step in the process of integration of the Indian Territory with Oklahoma Territory to form what is now the State of Oklahoma.
Sarah's father Joseph was the son of John Rector, a Muscogee Freedman.
John Rector's father Benjamin McQueen, was a slave of Reilly Grayson
who was a Muscogee Creek Indian. John Rector's mother Mollie McQueen was
a slave of Muscogee leader, Opothole Yahola who fought in the Seminole wars and split with the tribe, moving his followers to Kansas.
Oil strike and wealth
The parcel allotted to Sarah Rector was located in Glenpool,
60 miles (97 km) from where she and her family lived. It was considered
inferior infertile soil, not suitable for farming, with better land
being reserved for white settlers
and members of the tribe. The family lived simply but not in poverty;
however, the $30 annual property tax on Sarah's parcel was such a burden
that her father petitioned the Muskogee County
Court to sell the land. His petition was denied because of certain
restrictions placed on the land, so he was required to continue paying
the taxes.
To help cover this expense, in February 1911, Joseph Rector leased Sarah's parcel to the Standard Oil Company.
In 1913, the independent oil driller B.B. Jones drilled a well on the
property which produced a "gusher" that began to bring in 2,500 barrels
(400 m3) of oil a day. Rector began to receive a daily
income of $300 from this strike. The law at the time required
full-blooded Indians, black adults, and children who were citizens of
Indian Territory with significant property and money, to be assigned
"well-respected" white guardians.
Thus, as soon as Rector began to receive this windfall, there was
pressure to change Rector's guardianship from her parents to a local
white resident named T.J. (or J.T.) Porter, an individual known to the
family. Rector's allotment subsequently became part of the Cushing-Drumright Oil Field. In October 1913, Rector received royalties of $11,567.
As news of Rector's wealth spread worldwide, she began to receive
requests for loans, money gifts, and marriage proposals, despite the
fact that she was only 12 years old. Given her wealth, the Oklahoma Legislature
declared her to be a white person, so that she would be allowed to
travel in first-class accommodations on the railroad, as befitted her
position.
In 1914, an African American journal, The Chicago Defender,
began to take an interest in Rector, just as rumors began to fly that
she was a white immigrant who was being kept in poverty. The newspaper
published an article claiming that her estate was being mismanaged by
her family and that she was uneducated, and had a poor quality of life.
This caused National African American leaders Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois to become concerned about her welfare.
In June of that year, a special agent for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), James C. Waters Jr, sent a memo to Dubois regarding her situation. Waters had been corresponding with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the United States Children's Bureau over concerns regarding the mismanagement of Rector's estate. He wrote of her white financial guardian:
This prompted Dubois to establish the Children's Department of the
NAACP, which would investigate claims of white guardians who were
suspected of depriving black children of their land and wealth.
Washington also intervened to help the Rector family. In October of that year, she was enrolled in the Children's School, a boarding school at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, headed by Washington. Upon graduation, she attended the Institute.
Rector was already a millionaire by the time she had turned 18.
She owned stocks, bonds, a boarding house, businesses, and a 2,000-acre
piece of prime river bottomland. At that point, she left Tuskegee and,
with her entire family, moved to Kansas City, Missouri.
She purchased a house on 12th Street, that is still there and known as
the Rector House. The house has been purchased by a local nonprofit with
the intention of restoration and historical and cultural preservation.
Soon after moving to Kansas City she married a local man, Kenneth
Campbell. The wedding was a very private affair, with only her mother
and the bridegroom's paternal grandmother present. The couple had three
sons before divorcing in 1930.
Later life
Rector
lived a comfortable life, enjoying her wealth. She had a taste for fine
clothing and fast cars. She was frequently ticketed by the police of
the city for speeding. She hosted frequent gatherings at her home for
the leading members of the nation's African American community. She also
was remembered for sending her chauffeur to drive the children of the
neighborhood to school. Her husband partnered in 1928 with the auto
dealer Homer Roberts
and moved to Chicago to open Roberts-Campbell Motors, the second
African American owned auto dealership. New car sales faltered with the
onset of the depression and the venture soon closed.
In 1934, Sarah married William Crawford. They owned a restaurant where they entertained the likes of Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
Rector died on July 22, 1967, at the age of 65. Her remains were buried in the city cemetery of her hometown of Taft.
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