By Diane Euston
In 2019, I started on a journey with a group of incredible women to tell the true story of their family for the first time. People asked me to write about “the richest Black girl in America,” Sarah Rector, who lived as an adult in Kansas City.
I knew I couldn’t write about her without finding her family, and a dear co-worker of mine told me she knew Sarah Rector’s niece, Debbie. Debbie and I communicated, and I learned about the first misnomer. The photos shared via-social media, on history pages and even the Smithsonian’s website weren’t of Sarah Rector.
That was my first surprise – and the surprises kept coming.
I sat down with three of Sarah’s nieces, Debbie, Donna and Rosina, and listened intently as they whipped out notebooks, albums and folders full of information they had gathered in 30 years of research.
Why were they silent for so long? It’s simple. Their mother told them to just stay quiet- family business should stay private. But they felt it was time.
Here they were, trusting this important story to me. This was the beginning of a friendship- a sisterhood- that has been maintained even six years later. I told them that getting the truth out there to the masses would take some time.
I promised that I would be with them every step of the way.
Never did we think that there would be a full-feature movie based on Sarah Rector’s childhood. Never did we imagine we would sit down with the studio to watch “Sarah’s Oil” and give feedback to the producers.
But here we are!
In November 2019, the story was first published on my blog and in The Telegraph. It covered how over a century ago, headlines across America announced that Sarah Rector, a poor Black girl from Taft, Okla. struck oil and became a millionaire overnight.
But the true story of Sarah should be told by those who knew her, and from this story we learn more than about a little girl. I learned about their rich history that they’d spent countless hours piecing together from fragmented records.
These powerful women introduced me to stories about slavery, survival and life after striking it rich. From these long conversations, I learned that this story – a story that will come to life on screens nationwide in a few weeks – is more than the story of Sarah – it’s about the Rectors.
I was blessed then and I’m blessed now to have the opportunity to share their true legacy with the world.
Starting Within Enslavement
Sarah Rector’s luck hit in part because of her ancestry and the way in which land allotments for Native Americans- and their freedmen- occurred in Oklahoma. Sarah’s ancestors were enslaved by the Creeks in eastern Alabama. In the 1830s, the Five Civilized Tribes (Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Seminole Tribes) were forced to leave their lands. 20,000 Creek Indians and their enslaved people were forced west.
It wasn’t until an 1866 treaty with the U.S. government that the enslaved were freed and land was given for distribution.
Part of these lands – 160 acres each – were also given to the Creek freedmen. Sarah’s ancestors chose to settle together and form their own town that was called Taft (eight miles west of Muskogee) by 1904.
Today, Taft is one of only 13 all-Black towns still in existence in Oklahoma.
According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, Taft had two newspapers, three general stores, a brickyard, drugstore, a soda pop factory, a livery stable, a gristmill, two hotels, a restaurant, a bank and a funeral home- all before 1910.
Statehood and Land Allotments
Joe Rector (b. 1878) met and married Rose Jackson (b. 1886), and by 1907, they were living in a two-room cabin outside of Taft, population 250. They had three children: Becky (b. 1901), Sarah (b. 1902) and Joe, Jr. (b. 1906). At this time, the government was doling out the last of the Indian allotments before Oklahoma was admitted as a state.
By the time they had their chance to get a hold of land for their children, the pickings were slim. Sarah’s land, valued at about $500, was near a bend along the Cimarron River.
Land also required payment of taxes. Not in a position to pay for all of the acreage, Joe was able to get rid of Becky’s land but was having trouble finding anyone to buy the rest.
By 1911, Joe ended up quite satisfied when he was able to lease Sarah’s land to an oil company where he received a bonus of $160.
No oil was found and the lease ran out.
Oil was discovered on other Indian allotments given to children. In 1911, Harold Sells, 13, and his sister, Castella, 10, struck it big when oil was discovered on their land. Before they could really cash in, greed took hold.
In the middle of the night, dynamite was placed under their house in Taft where the two children were sleeping. The house erupted into fiery pieces. Harold was killed instantly. His little sister was trapped under burning timbers and was not as lucky.
These children were murdered for an estate valued at just over $50,000.
Several men, both Black and white, were implicated in the crime, including Jim Manuel, a great uncle of Sarah Rector’s.
Striking oil was surely a life-changer, but as the little Sells children learned, it also brought out the worst in some people.
Striking it Rich and the Sensational Headlines
In March 1913, oil driller B.B. Jones assembled the necessary equipment to check out Sarah’s land near the Cimarron River; any oil found would pay 12.5% in royalties.
In late August 1913, B.B. Jones produced a “gusher” on the land. In no time, it produced 2,500 barrels of oil per day. Sarah’s cut- per day– was $300.
It wasn’t uncommon for white guardians in Oklahoma to be placed by courts in order to “protect” any profits. For whatever the reason, Joe opted to appoint Thomas Jefferson (T.J.) Porter as Sarah’s guardian in July 1913. He was a trusted family acquaintance.
Guardians got on average of two to six percent of the profits, and in the case of T.J. Porter, he got less than two percent.
In November 1913, Joe was receiving $50 per month for Sarah’s care, which was a ton of money in those days. They eventually bought a seven-passenger Cadillac, a big upgrade from a horse “too old to work.”
It wasn’t long before the accusations came pouring in from outsiders.
Publications across America wrote of marriage proposals, especially those that came from four white men from Germany. “Evidently the color of an heiress does not matter if the color of her gold is genuine,” wrote Edward Curd, Sarah’s attorney.
of Sarah Rector
By October 1913, 11-year-old Sarah Rector had received $11,567 in royalties from the gusher.
It was an article in a respectable the Black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, that turned their worlds upside down. In November 1913, the newspaper headline read “Richest Colored Girl Forced to Live in Shack.”
Claims were made that Sarah was sleeping on the floor. The article claimed, “The parents are so ignorant they have no conception whatever the amount of her income and no inclination to assist upon a good education and befitting comforts to her, so little Sarah easily becomes the prey of white men.”
The headlines didn’t shake the foundation of this family, and in December 1913, Sarah received a phonograph, a piano, and a new five-room home for her and her family.
The NAACP got involved due to the continuous reports from the Chicago Defender. W.E.B. DuBois personally wrote the judge overseeing her allotments and asked that they ensure that Sarah was getting a good education.
In the Spring of 1914, Sarah was enrolled in the Tuskegee Institute’s elementary school, but she wasn’t going to do it alone. Her mother insisted that older sister, Becky go along with her.
After one year, the girls went to Fisk University’s boarding school. But their time away was limited. By 1917, the family had quietly moved together to Kansas City.
Most of Sarah’s money was held up in investments across the community and in bonds. T.J. Porter bought over 2,000 acres of land that he then leased for a steady income.
Going to Kansas City
By the time Sarah was 18, she was worth well over one million dollars. For their own safety, Sarah’s family secretly slipped away and moved north to Kansas City and settled within the east side’s booming African American community.
By 1918, there were 50 oil wells on Sarah’s land, and a new contract with a Kansas company resulted in a whopping $300,000 signing bonus.
Mama Rose, Sarah’s mother, bought a mansion at 2000 East 12th Street. The mansion, purchased for $20,000, was called Sunset Manor.
Moving into a beautiful brick mansion was a statement to everyone in the community– they were reformulating the boundaries of acceptance. They lived inside a mansion and eventually purchased the entire block between Euclid to Garfield.
Sarah was put in charge of most of her money when Kansas City judge Jules E. Guinotte released her from her guardianship. She was free at last.
August 17, 1920
Some Unfortunate Scandals
Not every piece of the Rector history is rosy. Even before the family’s wealth, Sarah’s father, Joe had run-ins with the law. In 1898, Joe was stabbed twice in Twine, once in the right shoulder and once in the left chest.
The Rector family came to Kansas City for a new life and to avoid the misfortunes that overtook other freedman families over money. But by 1922, some of Joe Rector’s old connections proved to be fatal.
Joe hooked up with his wife’s uncle, Jim Manuel, and got in over his head. Just over 10 years earlier, his wife’s uncle was allegedly involved in the explosion that killed two children with oil allotments. He wasn’t convicted, but he had a rap sheet that reached back decades.
While an inmate in the Missouri State Penitentiary, Jim, described as “60 years old, skinny as a rail, bald headed and without a natural tooth in his head,” contacted Joe Rector about some land in Mexico that was reportedly worth millions.
The story, likely embellished, suggested that Joe was able to convince his wife to pay for Manual’s bail and the money to send them to seek out the riches in Mexico. But the Rector nieces told me that Joe was working on bringing cattle back from Texas when tragedy struck.
Jim Manuel allegedly left Joe after taking all the money and disappeared. Defeated, the newspapers reported Joe “sobbed all the way” to Dallas where “his sorrow killed him” as he traveled by train on his way back to Kansas City.
Joe’s death record tells different story. Joe was hospitalized in Dallas and passed away. The cause of death looks like “trauma” and the underlying cause was kidney disease.
This death was a blow to his wife, Rose and her nine children in Kansas City. Mama Rose quickly arranged a train to take her beloved husband’s body back to Taft. He was buried at Blackjack Cemetery in the family plot.
Living the Big Life in Kansas City
Several stories were shared about the family’s time in the Rector mansion. It should be no surprise that the family had hired help in the Roaring Twenties, where less than a mile down the road was the booming 18th and Vine district – the hub of African American social activity.
Shortly after the death of Joe, Sarah married Kenneth Campbell when she was 20 years-old. Cars and clothes seemed to be the favorites with the Rector women. A chauffeur was tasked with driving a series of expensive vehicles, including a Rolls Royce.
When Rosa, Sarah’s little sister was forced to go to school, it was routine for her to be dressed while still sleeping and put inside the Rolls Royce limo while she still slept. The chauffeur would struggle to get her out of the car and “get her butt into school.”
The whole family, including Sarah and her husband, Kenneth lived in the Rector mansion.
The ladies loved finer clothing, but due to the color of their skin, they were not allowed to shop alongside white patrons in stores along Petticoat Lane in downtown Kansas City. Many stores, including Emery, Bird, Thayer & Co. (EBT) would shut their doors to the public and allow the Rector women to shop freely.
Sarah and her mother, Rose were known for their fancy vehicles they raced around town in, and both known to have a bit of a lead foot. Several speeding tickets were issued to both of them- especially to Sarah.
When she was pulled over in her shiny green and black Cadillac, Sarah would cockily turn to the officer and say, “Don’t you know who I am?!”
Sarah had three children, Kenneth (b. 1925), Leonard (b. 1926) and Clarence (b. 1929) before her marriage- and her finances- fell apart.
The entire frontage of 12th St. from Euclid to Garfield was bought by Rector money and rented out to people for additional income. The family resided in this home until shortly after the Stock Market Crash where it was then purchased by the Adkins Funeral Home.
A Quieter Family-Centered Life
Living large for everyone was cut quite a bit during and after the Depression. Sarah’s siblings all took on jobs; her mother even for a time went back to working as a maid.
Sarah divorced and moved to a much smaller home on the east side. In 1934, Sarah married William Crawford, the owner of Dick’s Down Home Cook Shop at 1521 E. 18th Street, a favorite hangout of the Kansas City Monarchs.
Sarah was known for her extravagant parties that are oftentimes referred to as being in the Rector Mansion on 12th Street where she entertained musicians such as Count Basie and Duke Ellington. Some parties did occur in this beautiful home, but the real parties happened, according to her nieces, when she moved to her home on Lockridge.
She continued to invest in real estate, owning several homes around 26th and Lockridge. She also owned a farm in Wyandotte County, Kan. where family often visited. Fond memories, although a bit traumatic at the time, included geese chasing the children all the way up to the door of the farmhouse.
Sarah was quiet and private; her easygoing nature was witnessed by her nieces in those visits to the farm.
Wyandotte County. Courtesy of the Rosa Rector Brown descendants.
At the highest point of her millions, Sarah Rector was said to have had an income larger than that of the President of the United States. Her oil wells at one time produced $2 per minute, and that wealth turned her whole family’s life upside down overnight.
The matriarch of the Rector family, Mama Rose, passed away in 1957 and is buried in Blackjack Cemetery next to her husband and generations of freedmen. Just over 10 years later, Sarah passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage on July 22, 1967. Ironically, services in Kansas City occurred at C.K. Kerford Funeral Home – the old Rector Mansion at 2000 E. 12th Street where she and her family had once lived a life of luxury.
Her final resting place in the ground was back where the story began- back in Taft, Okla. in that little peaceful parcel of land known as Blackjack Cemetery.
Rectifying the Rectors
Today, there are many rumors that circulate around the Rectors due to sensational journalism. The lies began then, and unfortunately, many of those lies are still circulated today.
Five generations of Rector descendants still call Kansas City home. They stayed quiet as the rumors about their family resurface every so often, such as the false photos of Sarah as a child and a young adult.
Time moved on, and Kansas City seemed to forget about Sarah Rector for the most part. The Rector Mansion has remained closed to the public and without renovations; however, the home is in the process of being listed on the National Register.
“We would like to see the house restored and have it become a historic landmark and museum,” Sarah’s nieces told me in 2019. “We have things we would like to share with everyone.”
Originally, the article was meant to rectify the Rectors – to give them some peace of mind that their family’s story is, in fact, part of the history of our nation. But if it’s to be told, it must be told in its entirety. This was meant to tell you about their whole family- not just Sarah – as Sarah’s story is interlaced with her grandparents, her parents and her eight siblings.
In 2019, the story given new life because of Sarah Rector’s nieces who were set upon making sure the story told was factual.
“Sarah’s Oil” Puts the Story Centerstage Again
I was honored to be the first person to tell this story about Sarah Rector with the Rector family. They knew her personally- they were present when their aunt was living a quiet life in Kansas City.
We were all surprised when we learned a full-feature movie was in production in Oklahoma, and we were thrilled when the producers reached out and wanted to give us the chance early this summer to see it.
“’Sarah’s Oil’ is going to ensure that our family and the world knows about this personal struggle my family went through,” Debbie Brown, Sarah’s niece explained. “When we were doing research, no one really cared. It’s nice that the story on this large stage is renewing interest in the Rector legacy that we’ve been diligent in researching for decades.”
Produced by Kingdom Story Company and Wonder Project and distributed nationwide November 7 by Amazon MGM Studios, “Sarah’s Oil” starring Zachary Levi and Naya Dasir-Johnson follows Sarah Rector’s journey as oil sharks try to take advantage of her allotment. Through the strength of her faith, family and her connections, an 11-year-old Sarah Rector is able to face adversity head-on.
“We’ve told our family for years- you need to know your history. It’s a shame it’s taken a movie to make sure that everyone knows these stories,” Brown explained.
I always have believed that history should be told in stories, and it has been my goal over the past several years to tell these unknown pieces of our collective history in a way that brings them to light.
Sitting in the theater side-by-side with Sarah Rector’s nieces and her great nephew while we watched this story truly come to life on the big screen was something I won’t soon forget. I used my words to tell their story; in this film, we saw Joe and Mama Rose along with Sarah Rector manifest in front of us. The movie feels deeply personal and masterfully crafts a complex story into a relatable tale for all ages.
“First, I cried. I laughed. I smiled. I went through every emotion when we saw the movie,” Debbie Brown said. “I felt like I was able to see and feel the emotions my family went through. I knew these people- so to see it transformed onto the screen, it was incredible. It made me realize how much I miss these family members we’ve lost.”
“Sarah’s Oil” producer, John Shepherd, wanted to make sure that this story was told with accuracy. “True stories are always a challenge, and Sarah’s Oil was no different. Very little is known about Sarah beyond the public record, so we leaned on the careful research of historians – like [Diane Euston] – and authors such as Tonya Bolden, who wrote ‘Searching for Sarah Rector,’” Shephard explained. “Along the way, we uncovered and corrected misinformation — including a widely circulated photograph that wasn’t even her. Our goal was to honor Sarah’s legacy with integrity, while inviting audiences to discover this remarkable young woman for themselves.”
And, it is a beautifully crafted movie that inspires the audience.
Because of “Sarah’s Oil,” there is a renewed interest in Sarah Rector locally. An historic marker is in the works for in front of the Rector Mansion, and on October 16, the city council announced that honorary street signs (“Sarah Rector Way”) will be placed on Euclid between 11th and 12th Streets.
In between a busy schedule and on the eve of the global pandemic, I met with Sarah’s nieces to learn so much more than the story of a little Black girl from Oklahoma who ended up in Kansas City.
I wrote in 2019: This article was meant to rectify the Rectors – to give them some peace of mind that their family’s story is, in fact, part of the history of our nation. . . Sarah’s story is interlaced with her grandparents, her parents and her siblings. Today, it’s kept alive by relentless Rector women set upon making sure their story from now-on is told right.
The time has finally come to tell the truth.
The rest of this story has yet to be written as the nation will soon learn about the Rectors on the big screen and be transported back to a time that seems so foreign to us. We should know this history, and “Sarah’s Oil” is large step in ensuring that this legacy is told correctly.
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Very well done. I have been friends since childhood with another nephew, Joseph Rector, who has now moved from Kansas City to Atlanta. He told me the story about his aunt Sarah years ago.