By the time Sarah Rector turned 18-years-old in 1920, the young Black woman had a personal net worth of over one million dollars ($1,000,000+). How was this possible? Rector and her family were "Creek freedmen" ...— Black citizens of the Creek Indian nation — and when the Creeks were forced to resettle west of the Mississippi in the 1800s, each one received a land allotment. Sarah Rector's contained rich oil deposits, making her enormously wealthy.
As you can imagine, there was tremendous media interest in her whereabouts and lifestyle, though much of the reporting was highly inaccurate and speculative. When she disappeared, the Black-owned newspaper the Chicago Defender suggested that Sarah had been kidnapped and that her legal guardians were profiting at her expense.
Learn what really happened to the 'Richest Black Girl in America' on BlackPast.org (link: http://www.blackpast.org/aaw/rector-sarah-1902-1967)
