I’m Rachel Hopkin and this How Curious episode focuses on an Oklahoma native whose life changed forever when she was just a girl back in 1913. Her name is Sarah Rector. That’s undisputed. So is fact that she was owner of a land allotment which became a huge source of oil. But much about Sarah is unknown and many of the accounts circulating about her contain errors. In fact, almost as soon as oil was found on her land, Sarah became the subject of baseless rumors. Then, as the decades passed, she faded from the public eye - so much so that even her own nieces only became aware of the extraordinary nature of her life after her death in 1967. I spoke with three daughters of Sarah’s younger sister Rosa: Donna Brown-Thompkins, Rosina Graves, and Debbie Brown. They remember that their aunt had "more things than we did, and our mother was just like ‘she can afford it’. But it never dawned on us either way of being rich and famous, because she didn’t act any different or dress any differently. And we called her ‘Aunt Sister’, because our mother always referred to her as ‘Sister’."
With their help, as well as that of the other people I spoke with for this episode and a few good texts, I hope to either stick to the truth, or - at least - informed historical conjecture as I go about relaying Sarah's story here.
Sarah Rector was born in 1902 in what is now northeast Oklahoma but which was then Indian Territory. Her parents were farmers and Freedmen – the term used to describe African-American ex-slaves of Native American tribes and their descendants. As citizens of the Muscogee nation, eligible Rector family members each received a 160 acres of land. But, according to Anita Arnold of Oklahoma City's Black Liberated Arts Center, the allotment given to Sarah seemed pretty worthless on the surface: “The land they gave to Sarah was so sandy and rocky, her father just despaired because nothing would grow on it." And he had to pay taxes on it, to the tune of around $30 a year, which be close to $1000 today. So in order to pay the taxes “he signed a lease with an oil company" according to Anita, "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. News of her wealth spread throughout the world, and she was getting marriage proposals from mostly white men. And she was just 11 years old."
Kathleen Watkins is an Oklahoma City playwright whose works focus on little known aspects of African American history. In 2018, she wrote a play about Rector called Brown Skinned Rich Girl. Kathleen remembers having a strong emotional reaction when she first learned about Sarah’s story: "It got my heart because I can only imagine being that age – 11 years old – and being told I have all of this money and not really understanding any of it. I mean, within her family, as well as with people in the community – what that must have been like. And then when people began to come from all over to see this little Black girl. It must have been so scary for her."
Sarah had good reason to be afraid. Two years earlier, a brother and sister around Sarah’s age had been murdered for their allotments. Herbert and Stella Sells had lived in Taft, the closest town to the Rector farm and it’s very likely that Sarah knew them. Kathleen believes that if “if it had not been for the publicity she got, she might also have been a victim to that”. As it was, newspapers around the world had taken up Sarah’s story (though, as mentioned earlier, their reports often contained more fiction than fact). It was a series of articles published in the African American newspaper, The Chicago Defender, which prompted a number of notable Black activists to intervene, including W. E. B. DuBois. DuBois wrote to the Rector family’s local judge on June 6, 1914 regarding some of the alarming claims he had read. Judge Leahy responded to him just five days later. (Debbie Brown kindly gave permission for How Curious to share Judge Leahy's letter on this webpage.)
In his letter, Leahy confirms that as the Muskogee County judge, he has jurisdiction over Sarah’s estate. From his words, it's also clear that he was no stranger to situations like Sarah’s: "As is my practice with these larger estate`s, I went to the Rector home on a Sunday and as soon as oil was discovered […], and in the presence of the parents, the Guardian and his attorney, took up and discussed the entire situation etc., and agreed upon certain changes looking towards the betterment of conditions for Sarah and the entire family." One of those changes was the construction of a five-bedroom home, putting paid to claims that Sarah was living in a shack. Another claim that she was uneducated was false – she was attending the local school in Taft. Moreover, during the discussion, Sarah’s father agreed that once she was a few months older, he would allow her to leave home to attend a more prestigious institution elsewhere.
The Defender articles had also expressed consternation regarding the handling of Sarah’s money, and asserted that she had been assigned a white guardian who was getting a “fabulous sum each year” but only allowing Sarah “a few dollars each month”. At that time in Oklahoma, it was standard to assign guardians to look after the assets of wealthy non-white children. They usually took the form of white businessmen and, alas, many of them did swindle their young charges. However, Leahy had already garnered a reputation for taking action against such grafters and sought to reassure DuBois on this point: "As to this ward having a white Guardian, this is true. The parents themselves selected him, his name being T J Porter, cattleman and neighbor of this family, who has been their benefactor for years and long before there was any possibility of their ever having any money." Most of Sarah’s money was placed in investments.
In the autumn of 1914, Sarah and her older sister Rebecca traveled to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where they were enrolled in its elementary school. From there, they went on to Fisk University in Tennessee and that’s where they were when the Rector family quietly relocated to a substantial house on East 12th Street of Kansas City, Missouri. Often referred to as the “Sarah Rector Mansion," it was actually owned by Sarah’s mother but was home to the entire close-knit Rector clan.
When Sarah turned 21 in 1922, she was finally able to manage her own wealth. She quickly developed a taste for life’s finer things according to her nieces. Debbie Brown told me that “we had a store here in the downtown area where Blacks could not shop. It was Emery, Bird, Thayer. And they would lock their doors up and close early to allow her to come down there and shop. They also would also take clothes and stuff to the Rector Mansion for her to try on.” Her nieces also laughed about their aunt's love of cars. Apparently Sarah “constantly bought cars cos she and Uncle Alfred kept wrecking them. She’d just go buy another one." Sarah also apparently loved to party and adored music, so she must have thoroughly enjoyed living in one of the hottest jazz scenes in the country. Among the big name musicians she entertained at the Rector Mansion were Duke Ellington and Count Basie.
Sarah married twice. She was 20 when she and her first husband wed. The couple had three sons before going their separate ways after around seven years. She married her second husband – a Kansas City restaurant owner – in 1934 and they were together until she died. And although the 1929 Wall Street Crash apparently caused her to lose a lot of money, she nonetheless remained comfortable for the rest of her life.
Money can often be the cause of deep rifts between people, but Sarah remained very close with her family. Her nieces recalled that when Sarah purchased a farm, all of the Rectors would spent time there: “she had a great big old garden and all the adults that went out, they helped with the garden and planted stuff. It wasn’t differentiated that it was her farm. It was a farm where we all went and we just had a good time."
When Sarah died in 1967, Donna was 12 and Rosina and Debbie were in their late teens. As mentioned earlier, that’s when they began to grasp how exceptional their aunt’s life had been. At the same time however, they were warned against exploring it too deeply, at least with regard to one aspect, as Debbie recalls: "After she passed, I remember my mum and our uncle going to Oklahoma a lot. And they came back one time and got all of us together and said ‘whatever you hear about Oklahoma or whatever is down there, leave it alone. It’s dangerous, it’s not worth it.' And my mum told us some of the story about the Sells children. We truly believe that my grandmother moved everybody up here to Kansas City just from the fear of being blown up because of the money. That’s why my mum was: ‘just don’t go down there,’ my uncle: ‘don’t go down there.' After they passed, just going down there for genealogy and stuff, the three of us, my oldest brother’s like ‘you don’t need to be going down there. Momma told you don’t go down there talking about you’re a Rector,' and that was only 10 years, 15 years ago." So the nieces have largely steered clear of Oklahoma, although Sarah is buried here in Taft, very close to where she grew up. But while they avoid that part of their aunt’s story, they are concerned about misinformation spread regarding other aspects of Sarah’s life, including her physical self.
Currently if you search for Sarah Rector online, two black and white images repeatedly surface. One is a full length shot of a solemn girl aged around 12 years. Her hair is in pigtails, she’s wearing a plaid dress, and her right hand is holding onto a chair. The other is a head shot of a young woman. Her hair is center-parted and seems to be plaited on top of her head. She’s wearing a dark blouse or dress and there's some pale lace and a bow around the collar. Yet Sarah’s nieces are adamant that neither of these photos are actually of their aunt. The name of the lady in the adult photo appears to be Callie House, a civil rights activist who was born over 50 years before Sarah. Certainly if you search for “Callie House” online, that image will come up. As for the other photo, the nieces’ mother told them years ago that the girl was not their aunt. The fact that many people believe that these two photos depict Sarah Rector is deeply frustrating to them: “It’s not our family. If our family’s going to be out there, at least have the right picture out there." (Debbie Brown kindly shared the three images of the actual Sarah which are included on this webpage, as well as the one of Sarah's mother.)
Sarah Rector’s story is the last in the current series of How Curious. We’ll be back in the Autumn. In the meantime, you can find all the previous episodes on the KGOU site or wherever you get podcasts. My deep thanks to all of the contributors to this episode: Anita Arnold, Debbie Brown, Donna Brown-Thompkins, Rosina Graves, and Kathleen Watkins. Thanks also to Deidre Anderson, Cody Clark, and to John McGraw, who read the excerpts from Judge Leahy’s letter in the audio version of this story.
How Curious is a production of KGOU Public Radio. It’s produced and hosted by Rachel Hopkin. The editor is Logan Layden and David Graey composed the theme music.
If you have an Oklahoma-related question or subject that you’d like How Curious to cover, please email us at curious@kgou.org. We’d love to hear from you.
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*This is amended from the original headline which read "The Richest Black Colored Girl in America".
(The audio version of this story refers to the The African American History Is AMERICAN History’s video about Sarah Rector which is called "Sarah Rector: 'The Richest Colored Girl in the World'").
