Sarah Rector
In 1913, Sarah Rector, a 10-year-old black girl received a land allotment of 160 acres in Oklahoma. The best farming land was reserved for whites, so she was given a barren plot. Oil was soon discovered there and she became the country's first black millionaire. 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, Rose McQueen and her husband, Joseph Rector (both born 1881), were the grandchildren of slaves owned by the 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 gran...