← The History Chicks : A Women's History Podcast
The History Chicks : A Women's History Podcast
Sarah Rector
01:02:48
Once upon a time, an eleven-year-old girl named Sarah Rector struck it rich with a discovery that was perfectly timed for the rise of the automobile and the expansion of American manufacturing. After hitting the jackpot, she had to escape the minefields of greed, racism, politics, and public opinion in order to build a satisfying life for herself at last.
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A
Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.
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And here's your 32nd summary.
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Once upon a time, a little girl hit the jackpot and then had to escape the minefields of greed, racism, politics and public opinion in order to build a satisfying life of her own. At long last, the end.
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Lets talk about Sarah Rector. But first let's place her in history. In 1913, New York City's Grand Central Terminal train station opened. The 16th Amendment to the U.S. constitution became law, providing the legal basis for the institution of a graduated income tax. But it took almost until the end of the year for the 1 to 7% tax to take effect. Within a very few years the top rate was set at 67%. On the eve of President Wilson's inauguration, there was a famous women's suffrage procession through Washington D.C. organized by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns and led by Inez Milholland. Ida B. Wells marched with her Illinois delegation. Despite African Americans being told to march in a separate section, the Ford Motor Company began to operate. The world's first moving assembly line for the Model T, the Mona Lisa is finally recovered two years after it had been stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. Born this year, Rosa Parks, Olympian Jesse Owens, Vivian Leigh and US Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford Died this year. Harriet Tubman, J.P. morgan and women's suffrage activist Emily Davison. And in August of this year 1913, an 11 year old girl struck it rich with a discovery perfectly timed for the rise of the automobile and the expansion of American manufacturing. Hello and welcome to the show. It's just me today. Susan is preparing for that festival we call the Giving of Thanks. And so on with the show. Sarah Rector was born on March 3, 1902 just outside of the town of Twine, Indian territory, which is now modern day Oklahoma. The second of the nine surviving children of Joseph and Rose Rector. Joe and Rosa, as Mama and Papa were called, were farmers like the large majority of their neighbors. Corn or cotton were the cash crops, but largely they were subsistence or self sufficient farmers. For the rest of their food they had kitchen gardens and everybody had a little livestock. And in order to explain some significant plot points in this story, I'm going to have to take you into the wayback machine back to Georgia and Alabama in the early 1800s, hundreds the new American nation was emerging from the revolution against Britain and now turned uneasy eyes on other nations who happened to be living upon the continent. People they'd already jostled and crowded and frankly mistreated a group of Native Americans called, quote the five civilized Tribes. I, I, I, I, I, I know, I know, I know. Why were they given that name? Mostly because they were more prone to adopt the European styles of dress, of housing, more prone to adopt a Christian religion, farming techniques. They had in some cases a written language, a constitution, and something else these Native Americans had that was like their neighbors there in the south of America. The Cherokee, Choctaw Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole tribes all held African Americans in slavery. And so when it came to pass that the US Government decided it was time that the five tribes land was to be open to settlement by white people by 1820, the pressure built to remove Native Americans from their land by hook or by crook, with a cavalcade of chicanery, fake benevolence, a lot of take Baxian philosophy and general chaos. And ultimately by forcible removal, America wanted millions of acres of their land. In 1830, United States President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. I'll quote a little bit from the law as it was described by Congress. And I quote, this act provides for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories and for their removal west of the river Mississippi. Oh, he tried to be reassuring, didn't he? President Jackson, let me quote him. Your white brethren will not trouble you. They will have no claim to the land. You can live upon it, you and all your children in peace and prosperity. As long as the grass grows and the water runs, it will be yours forever. But he also said in other contexts and certainly to a different audience, this Indian Removal act will place a dense and civilized population on large tracts of land now occupied by a few savage hunters. Perhaps they will cast off their savage habits and become an interesting civilized and Christian community upon the influence of good counsels and protection of the government. Now I'm here to tell you they, they tried that before. For example, they've already divided the the Creek nation in Georgia into parcels which promptly got stolen by white settlers. So.
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So the surprise level should be low that the quote five civilized tribes were very, very suspicious of what was about to happen. Ultimately, the government resorted to forcible removal. The most famous of these of course being the Cherokee's removal from several southern states to modern day Oklahoma in the years 1838 and 1839 in which thousands of Cherokees perish. Now we in the United States typically learn about that situation as, quote the Trail of Tears. But it actually refers to a decade worth of challenges for all the five civilized tribes and the Immense amount of fatality that it caused. As to the Creek, the tribe that we are going to be focused on, in 1832, as I said, the United States government divided their land into allotments which settlers immediately stole. And when they fought back in 1836, the Secretary of War sent a general and a large amount of troops to forcibly remove them. And on the trip from Alabama, in this case to Indian territory, about 35% of the creek didn't survive the trip. It was not just the five nations that got pushed over the Mississippi, of course. Here where I am is the landing place of the Shawnee, the Delaware and the Kickapoo. I saw a map that I think I will link to so you can see whose land you live and work on. If you are in the area of the United States or Canada, I think that's important. We don't learn about that, do we? I grew up in Wichita, so we always knew that we were on the land of the Wichita. But others are a little bit more obscure. This land, the western frontier, was given the name Indian Country. It went all the way from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi river, from Canada in the north down to a country that no longer exists in the south, the Republic of Texas. Millions and millions of acres that had been lived on for millennia, as yet undisturbed by large scale displacements. We know from history what's coming, but they don't. Not yet. The smaller part, the location the five tribes and others were pushed onto, actually displaced Comanches and Osage, by the way, no one regarded them at all. Let me put these people on your land. No one asked anyone for permission, of course. Accompanying the Native Americans on their traumatic and sometimes fatal journey, were there African American enslaved people, including our Sarah Rector's great grandparents who came with the Creek tribe from Alabama. Ending up in what is now modern day Oklahoma, the tribes tried to settle into their new reality. There were a couple of decades that passed. New generations have been born. Most of the five tribes sided with the Confederacy when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Notably, though, the specific Creek chieftain who was in charge of Sarah Rector's ancestors, his name is Opothla Yahole. He declined to join the Confederacy. In fact, he promised amnesty and freedom to any African Americans who joined him on his plantation. This, of course, angered the Confederate forces. So by default, really, he had to abandon his neutrality. As a result, both of Sarah's grandfathers fought in the Civil War on the Union side. So we know who won the Civil War. Slavery was abolished at the End of it, of course. Oh, ho. But not in Indian Territory. That was not included in the paperwork. Pressure had to be brought to bear to force the Native Americans to free their enslaved people and then to make them officially citizens of whichever nation in which they resided. Sarah's ancestors were then known as Creek freedmen. I saw an illegal document where the rectors wrote adopted in parentheses, or the clerk did, but they. They don't usually separate themselves that way. As punishment for their position in the war, half of Indian territory was ceded back to the United States government. Now, I read that it was due to the actions of the Loyalists like Opothle Yahole that they still had any all. Now, that was the ostensible reason, the punishment for the Civil war. Now, the government had been trying to buy or bully land out of the five tribes all through the war. It's a pattern, isn't it? This is exactly, by the way, when Pa Ingalls moved his family into Osage land in the book Little House on the Prairie. He was not supposed to be there. It was still Native American land. And you can see from, you know, the pattern of constant seizure, treaty betrayal, how everyone is feeling when they see that cabin go up next to that path, right? He is the harbinger of yet more nonsense. As time passed, the policy of the United States was to weaken the nation status of these tribes, settle things for good. And they decided they would subdivide the Native American lands into individual plots of land. A song and dance, by the way, that everyone involved was extraordinarily familiar with. The Dawes act of 1887 provided for a very specific breakdown of who received how many acres. I will say that the Dawes act actually purposely excluded the five civilized tribes. It took further legislation to rope them into the scenario, distributing the land relatively equally up until a certain cutoff point. This included people not yet born up to a certain date. Specifically, though, the future legislation made absolutely clear that the rights to minerals and oils within each individual's land went along with the land and were not, in fact, a separate license, a fact that will be key to later events. By doing that, by Giving each member 160 acres, the United States was able to scoop up 90 million acres of, quote, spare land. Who says mathematics cannot be full of creativity?
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Now the people that got the 160 acres included both Mama and Papa, who had married in 1898. They built a house and farmed on Mama's land. Papa Joe's was sold little by little for cash. You know how you have a sheet cake in the break room every time you pass by? Just a slice, just an inch. Snackity snack, snack. Little by little, his land was gone. Now, according to the treaty, any member of the Creek Nation born before March 4, 1906 was entitled to their own piece of land. Men and women. Though Papa and Mama's oldest son died as an infant before he could claim his segment, the family did have three children who met the criteria. Oldest daughter Rebecca, our Sarah, and the oldest son, Joe Jr. By now, of course, the pickings were slim. These children kind of swept in right at the end. Rebecca's land was nowhere near home and Sarah's was Broken up into several pieces. Some were 50 miles away. Other little jigsaw pieces were wedged around a river about eight miles away. And the year after Sarah received her land in 1907, Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory joined the United states as its 46th state. Oklahoma. I didn't know it was that late. I did not know Oklahoma was one of the last states. As they grew to school age, one by one, the Rector kids went to school in the nearby town of Taft, one of the 50 or so, quote, black towns that had been founded during this era. It was a booming town of its kind. Three general stores, a restaurant, two hotels, a bank, a funeral home, a brickyard, a lumber mill, a livery stable, two newspapers. Taft is still there. It's not a ghost town. It is a thriving community. And I'm just extrapolating from work we did in earlier episodes. African American teachers tended in general. I don't know specifically about the Taft school, But they tended to be more qualified than white teachers in the same locations Due to a lack of opportunities for well educated people of color. A lot of times, your African American schools provided honestly a better education. Remember again, second reference to Laura Ingalls wilder. She, at 15, was given a teacher's license based on an examination at the dinner table. So just letting you know. Sarah and her siblings likely received a very good basic education. In contrast to Mama and Grandma, who had had to sign their documents with an X in front of a witness. But all the family's land, technically free, came with a price. Property taxes came due every year. And Papa soon found it necessary to start selling off more land to meet those bills. But the only interest at all was in Rebecca's land down south, which he sold for it was a pretty good amount. 1700, about $62,000 in modern money. Joe Jr. S land in Sarah's was considered junk land. Really dry, rocky, weirdly shaped, inconveniently placed, but not worthless. About 20 miles away from Sarah's land, Speculators had struck oil on the property of another creek woman. Which turned out to be a reservoir of oil, an underground lake of black gold. And Papa had little trouble getting oil leases signed For Juni, as they called Joe Jr. And Sarah's Land. The oil rush was on. It was just like the gold rush. Hopeful dreamers called wildcatters crawled to the area looking for their lottery ticket. Unfortunately, the man who had leased Sarah's land zeroed out and abandoned her land. Papa couldn't believe it. You know, he was, like, in the middle of all this excitement. We really do have junk land. He was getting ready to sell off Sarah's parcels when another offer came in for Elise. It was a super low ball one, but it gave him some time and it was cash in hand. Yeah, okay sir, your funeral. You know what Pipa didn't know because everyone was very careful that it didn't get out was that five miles away from there someone had hit oil. And these partners were quietly getting leases on all the neighboring parcels of land. They kept it on the DL. The rumor is in fact the person that found the oil before he told the landowner cut his phone line so he wouldn't be able to tell anybody. Before he was able to secure all the rest of that land, an oilman named B.B. jones started work. And it took him well over a year. But on August 29, 1913, the well on Sarah's land struck oil. Did it ever. 105,000 gallons of oil came out of there a day. Sarah as the landowner, by custom and contract, that's important, was entitled to an eighth, which is 12.5% of all the profit came straight to this 11 year old girl. 300 a day in 1913 money. That's $9,850 a day in today's money. Now how would you spend that? How did she spend that? And with great money came great danger. Once the land proved to be, oh, valuable after all, guardianship of Sarah was taken away from her parents. And the court ordered that Sarah's guardian had to be a white man. Now what made the average white man automatically better than a child's own father? You know the answer. You know it's racism. All done under the guise of protecting the interests of the minor. Sarah's parents and others like them were called uneducated and naive. They said now surely there'd be more of a vetting process then to get educated and smart men to be in charge. Alas, guardians all over Oklahoma and Kansas proved to be the most nefarious of criminals. Embezzling, tricking, abusing, abandoning their charges, making backdoor deals and signing away their child landowners rights. Almost 150 children who owned land had been thrown into orphanages. In fact, while their guardians pockets jingled with filthy lucre, two Native American children had died in a house explosion when their stepfather and guardian schemed to get ownership of their oil well. There's nothing too low to be done. And there was no bottom to the well of greed that was plumbed in the oil fields. Now what was to be done? So Sarah's parents had no Option but to have a white guardian. But they were given the opportunity to nominate someone they trusted before the court just assigned someone. Maybe that was the best the judge could do within the law. But they were given the choice. And they settled on A neighbor named T.J. porter, who was a cattle rancher who lived just outside of town. Someone that they had known for a long time and they considered him an honest man. Time would tell if he would live up to their trust in him. He'd have to withstand a lot of temptation. Because on Sarah's land, well after well was hitting oil, the money coming in escalated exponentially. A whole town sprang up around this oil strike. We talk a lot of times about the only people that make money in a boom town are the people that provide pickaxes and pancakes. Well, the pickaxes and pancake people were printing money. But unlike a lot of the gold rush, the actual prospectors were printing money also. The Kansas City Star newspaper published the first article about Sarah that same year. The headline, millions to a Negro girl. Sarah Rector, 10 year old, has income of 300 a day for oil. They were the first, but not the last. Reporters began to swarm the boom town of Drumright is what it was called. There were expeditions out to the town of Taft and on out to Sarah's parents house. Articles were written about how she was, quote, mentally deranged because she hid under the bed. When a swarm of reporters came into the house, I'd head under the bed too. Since that first article had come out, the deluge of mail had been unbelievable. Among the letters there were death threats because racism is alive and marriage proposals because opportunism is alive too. There were begging letters, business propositions, distant family getting in touch for no reason at all. With better intentions. But no more fact checking. A reporter from the famous black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, ran an article on the front page of their newspaper. Richest colored girl forced to live in shack. The writer painted a picture of a greedy white guardian who forced the family to live in poverty and kept Sarah's family on a short leash and small allowance with I quote, ignorant and feckless parents who were led by their noses and didn't advocate for her interest. Sarah was built up in that series of articles to be a victim of the system. The public was following this story with such interest it had everything. Rags to riches, the wild west, intrigue and pathos. It was a heady combination.
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Well, that's it. Summer has finally gone and I waved goodbye. And then I slowly am noticing that the holiday season multiple Holidays, Christmas in my case. I mean, there's a limited amount of time left to buy gifts.
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I know.
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B
And so I have been looking around all year trying to decide. I've got a note app in my phone that I've got lists of anything people mentioned or loved or whatever. And I have a hot one for my sister because guess what? When we were in Italy, she stole my OSEA body butter.
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A
Oh no. Oh no.
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B
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A
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B
I am here to tell you that is a high draining piece of machinery. Also, it comes in a beautiful gift box, so I can just drop it off at her house. There you go. And it's done.
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- [26:23]
B
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A
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And now a mystery. The Defender proclaimed that Sarah Rector, age 12, richest girl in America, had gone missing. Here's a quote from the article. Evidently she was lured away by candy and a handful of pennies when at home she lived in a hut and had no playthings like other children.
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Okay. Speculation ran rife. You know the saying, a lie can run around the world before the truth can get its boots on. People just became convinced that Mr. White Guardian Porter had their Sarah locked up somewhere in a cave while he was cackling and sleeping on piles of gold co coins, the alarm about her disappearance gripped the nation. Unfortunately, the paper had to report about a month later that, oh, she'd been in Oklahoma this whole time. The publicity had led the family to seek some solitude with friends for a while. Whoops.
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Chuck a little bit of air out of the hot air balloon. They had been inflating there for a while, but the NAACP had already taken an interest in Sarah's welfare, even petitioning the governor of Oklahoma to look into her affairs personally. He answered them, she's fine. Well, that's not very reassuring. No less than W.E.B. du Bois himself, one of the founders of the NAACP, wrote to the local judge asking for details. And this judge knew all the brouhaha. You know, he wanted to be reassuring and thorough. So he wrote back right after the big oil strike. The Guardian, Mr. Porter, had come to the judge with a plan to build Sarah's family a new house. And here, available if necessary, was a detailed financial breakdown of construction materials and a thorough list after the house was done, of essentials like rugs, furniture, dishes, towels, ovens, etc, all at market prices. Sarah was still living in her, quote, shack, I. E. Her original family house, because houses do not appear by magic and her new one was still being built. Mr. Porter was making Sarah's money into an investment portfolio. Also details available at request. She had land, they bought downtown buildings. One in in particular had a lot of commercial clients like restaurants, hotels and stores. She's a teeny, tiny landlord. She held a plethora of mortgages, and he was diversifying her wealth, you know, all documented and above board. His position seemed to be, I don't know how much oil there is. I don't know when this fountain of money is going to stop. You know, she could sure buy a whole bunch of cool stuff, but then all you'll have is cool stuff. What I want is to set her up for the future. He had discovered that the kids had to walk four miles a day to school. And there was no black school closer to the new house either. So he got them a horse and buggy. To make it easier, Mr. Porter gave Sarah's father an allowance of modern fifteen hundred dollars a month for the family. The house was completely taken care of, school was completely taken care of. No one had to work. Mr. Porter was worried that this sudden influx of money would go to people's heads. He has seen the flood of mail that has come in. He was very suspicious of the extended family. You know, maybe you can question the paternalism here because, you know, Mr. And Mrs. Rector were grown people. At least Mr. Porter was looking after Sarah's own interest. We, we actually saw what happened to Shirley Temple, didn't we, during our episode on her. Her parents spent all of her money. They blew it all. So Mr. Porter, though, I mean, he authorized a car and a piano and a phonograph, et cetera. He's not against cool stuff or comfort. He just wanted to be a little bit conservative. And it's not his fault that the law decreed there be a white man in charge. So he's not the one that wrested control from Sarah's parents. And I can only imagine there was a great deal of consultation just based on his behavior. You know, he's operating within what they asked him to do. At this point, Sarah was making $2aminute. It was a very big, big, big responsibility. Now, Mr. Porter did take a salary. You know, he did a lot of work. It was $900 a month.
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A
What?
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B
Okay, that's less than 2% of Sarah's income. And it was also less than half of what a usual guardian fee was. And here it is, the copious documentation passed through a local judge to explain his work in detail. It really seems like Mr. And Mrs. Rector's faith in this neighbor was not misplaced. The local judge, too, the man that had answered the naacp, had his own record of coming down hard on guardians who tried any tricks. He also welcomed oversight by the NAACP or the Creek nation itself. In other cases, the NAACP seemed to have this position. And I'm quoting from one of their reports, the parents are so ignorant, they have no conception whatever the amount of her income, and no inclination to assist upon a good education. So little Sarah becomes easily the prey of white men. Now, the NAACP was relieved, having received all this documentation. Of course, they chafed at the idea of the rule to have white guardians at all. And they could at the very least press for a furthering of her education. A decision was made to send Sarah, age 12, and her slightly older sister Rebecca to school in Alabama at the Tuskegee Institute, which was Booker T. Washington's school for teachers. But there was a school for children on the grounds called the children's house. Student teachers were able to teach there as part of their education. Although of course, there. There were credentialed teachers there to really teach the children. They were also, in addition to academics, taught gardening, farming, cooking and housework for more of a well rounded education. And I'm not sure why the brother didn't go at this time. There were many kids in the house. Maybe you just have to draw the line somewhere. I don't know. I read they were going to just send Sarah the person with the money, Sarah alone. And mama insisted on her having a companion. They didn't stay long, less than a Year they had aged out and were sent instead to Fisk University's boarding high school. There was further drama about guardianship of Sarah's money. Papa was named a guardian when Sarah was 14, because at the age of 14, the landowner had a say in who the guardian was. I'm sorry to say that ran afoul of the law again. They yanked Papa away in favor of another white businessman in town. People were tussling. Mr. Porter was accused again of grifting. It turns out, no, he was still 100% honest. But Mr. Porter's lawyer had skimmed over $10,000 from Sarah's money. Now, at least people were watching. But people fought over control of this vast fortune, pretty much her whole existence. They moved up here near me to Kansas City. I read in the middle of the night. They just slipped away. And ultimately bought in Mama's name a giant house on 2000 East 12th Street. It came to be called Sunset Manor, although it's known now as the Rector Mansion. She went to Lincoln High School, which is still open. Go Blue Tigers. That was my homage to Susan. When Sarah became an adult, control of her fortune finally passed to her, which was not a given. There was a series of years of struggle. You know, there were threats of putting her money in a trust, of assigning her a male guardian, et cetera. But eventually she got a hold of control. And then the family lived high. There was a full household of servants, a chauffeur or two at one point. Famously, every adult member of the household had their own Cadillac. Kansas City was still deeply segregated. Sarah and her family really couldn't go downtown to shop at all the elaborate multi story department stores that are today, alas, no longer there. But such was their purchasing power that Emory, Bird, Thayer and Hartsfeld and all the other major retailers on Main and Petticoat Lane downtown would close down their entire operations to allow Sarah's family to do their shopping. Other vendors would come to the house with a selection. It was an era of exuberance and excess in America after World War I. And the Rectors were swept along in its wake.
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So I do not know if you are like me, but my goodness, could some hours disappear from my life with my phone in my hand doom scrolling or having real after reel of cats and kids and costumers and whatever, just scroll past and you look up and you're like it's dark outside. How did that happen? I think a lot of us have fallen down that particular rabbit hole. And so to combat that, I gave myself the gift of masterclass what this does is provide me with intellectual stimulation, that I control it. Yeah. You know what I mean?
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A
Yes.
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B
And then my brain gets to. It's almost like it's eating good food instead of jun food. I guess I would relate it to be like that. In particular, speaking of food, I love a class by author Michael Twitty. He is an author of things like the Cooking Gene and Kosher Soul. He has a class called tracing your roots through food. So interesting and I love that. It's almost like a 360 view of history and food and how a society becomes what it is, you know, and how that reflects in its cuisine. So I love that. And then also very timely given our recent episode. Ken Burns is the instructor of a class called documentary filmmaking. Wouldn't you be a fool not to take that class?
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A
Yeah, that's on my list of ones that I want to watch. So far. I dove right in with Margaret Atwood's creative writing class. Could I have a four hour session with Margaret Atwood talking to me about point of view and structure and plot? Yes, please. Isn't it interesting how different people can talk about the same thing? I mean, how many classes have I been to that talked about these things but you have somebody else that talks about it in their own way, like Margaret Atwood and it's just like you've never heard it before and you're absorbing it.
- [38:08]
B
I love it. Masterclass.
- [38:10]
A
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B
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- [38:30]
A
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- [38:36]
B
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- [38:46]
A
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- [39:08]
B
The year Sarah was 20, she experienced the lowest of lows and the greatest of joys. Papa Joe fell prey to a flim flam man, a relative of Mama Rose's actually with quite the criminal record, including murder, some say. The short version of this story is Papa was lured to Texas and abandoned, having lost about $7,000 of Sarah's money. The family wrote that Papa cried himself sick and died of heartbreak. Now he did die on this trip in a hospital in Dallas, officially of kidney disease. And later that year, Sarah married a young man about her age named Kenneth Campbell. He was a real estate officer at the Square Deal Realty Company. He was a man of ambition and influence. He later became quite the man of business. He was a partner in the 9,400 square foot Robert Crawford car dealership in Kansas City. They owned another franchise in Chicago, in fact, in the Roberts building. It was almost like a cavalcade of black owned businesses down there near the 18th and vine area, a famous building. Mr. Campbell was taken in as a partner at this car dealership. They sold a car called the Hup Mobile. And I literally had never heard of this car before. But I love the 1922 Phaeton. I'll have to show you a picture of it. I kind of want one. Although where would you get parts? Just nowhere. You'd have to make them or get your local blacksmith. But notably, Sarah was famous for driving around hell for leather in a green and black Cadillac. And just like our old friend Alice Roosevelt would ask the policeman who inevitably pulled her over, don't you know who I am?
- [41:01]
A
They did.
- [41:02]
B
Everyone did. Everyone knew who Sarah was. What an absolute perfect time to be in Kansas City. The jazz scene at 18th and vine was coming into its own. The Campbells hosted them all at their house. Duke Ellington, Count Basie fighter, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson. About this time, Hattie McDaniel had a career as a touring blues singer and she recorded a couple of tracks for merit records at 1704 E. 18th St. Such a neighborhood. That was the only African American recording house in Kansas city. Surely Hattie McDaniel was also in that house. Everyone who was anyone passed through Sunset Manor. Sarah was so famous in fact, that their house was included in the map of a limousine tour that you could take in Kansas City if you were a visitor. Sarah and Kenneth opened a large restaurant and dance hall called the Inglenook. Seating for 160 in quote, a fairy tale woodland dell called the Temple of Terpsichore. That's the muse of dance. There was fancy food and drink, a house band, glorious entertainment for the African American community. I'm sorry to say I drove by there. It's at 35th and Campbell and it is a grass covered empty corner. Now you just never know what came before. There seems to be no trace of something that for a decade was so important to the African American society in Kansas City. It made me feel, made me feel a little sad actually. Also important to society. Sarah Founded an organization called the 20 Charity Women's Club, which was a gathering of wealthy African American women who focused on helping the less fortunate in their communities and furthered the interest of the African American economic boom in Kansas City. And Sarah had two sons during these good years, Kenneth Jr. And Leonard. But a lot happened in 1929, as we know. The stock market crash hit the country hard, and Sarah in particular, a lot of her bonds were worthless. Her stocks depreciated. Her mortgages that she held were defaulted upon. The inglenook had to shut down. She did have some assets left, property and leases in Oklahoma and Kansas City, and a few of her wells stayed active honestly until a couple decades ago. But the oil boom itself had dried up, and the flamboyant, frivolous expenditure of the past was abruptly over. The last straw was the enormous tax bill levied on the fabulous Rector mansion, and Sarah sold it to a funeral home and moved to a humbler home on Brooklyn Avenue. Now, you'll read that it was sort of a tumble into pennilessness. I just drove by that house. See, that's the advantage of a story that happens right by my house. It's 3,000 square feet. It, you know, it's nice. She, you know, people still live there, so I won't share the photo or, in fact, the street number, but, you know, she didn't have a ballroom anymore. And many, not all, but many family members had to peel away and get jobs, make their own ways in the world. Though it looks like she bought a few houses in that area. So maybe she bought separate houses for people to live in. I'm not 100% sure, but she owned a lot of property right by that house at about this time. So she was no longer filthy rich, but she was still pretty wealthy. Sarah's last child, little Clarence, was born this year. And from the new house, whatever tensions existed in the family after all this turmoil, I don't know. But Sarah and Kenneth divorced this year, and he moved to Chicago to run that second car dealership. Ultimately, he would become a city alderman and had had a nice life. But that's the last we'll hear of Kenneth. Sarah bought a farm. Not the farm. She didn't buy the farm. She bought some land outside of town. And that became the country hub for sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, A country refuge from the hustle and bustle of real life. We're still okay, you know, we're still good. When she was 32, Sarah married for the second time, this time to a restaurateur named William Crawford who owned Crawford Lunch on 18th Street. I love their ads. One just says, still, they eat where? At Crawford's Lunch, that cool, cozy lunchroom where good things to eat are still served differently. They are still screaming over Crawford's Club Breakfast. They're the talk of the town. So evidently, after you've left the fabulous nightclub where you've been dancing to the sounds of Count Basie, you can show up at Crawford's Lunch in the middle of the night and get yourself a good club breakfast at 4 in the morning. I was able to see quite a few advertisements for both the Inglenook and Crawford's Lunch when I accessed the archives of the call, which was Kansas City's main African American newspaper. In addition to that, I was able to read society columns. And it's a searchable engine that I had access to through the Kansas City Public Library, to which I'm very grateful. Again, anyone who was anyone had passed through there. I'm not completely clear on how long it was open. It very well could have continued through the 90s.
- [46:26]
My source isn't 100% sure. They had some recollection of it being becoming a chili parlor or something. But anyway, they were small children and I cannot consider that a reliable source. So just say it lasted however long it lasted. I'm really not sure. But it was a very, very popular place at the time. The Crawfords lived relatively quietly on yet another house on Lockridge, near baseball player Satchel Page's house. It's a lovely few blocks of classic shirtwaist houses about 15 minutes from here. But the Crawfords kept entertaining the great and good from this house and acting as a hu for the extended family. Sarah was described as a quiet person, a private person, and very, very strong. Here's the thing. She spent her entire life living in interesting times. And it was so nice to live a life that was uneventful in the macro sense, but full of things in the personal sense. Family and friends and love, frankly. Sarah Rector Campbell Crawford suffered a stroke when she was 65 in 1967 and died in the hospital. She was ironically taken to her old home, the Rector mansion, because it was now a funeral home, perhaps a nice curtain call. And then was brought back to the Blackjack cemetery in Taft, Oklahoma, to rest beside her parents and many of her siblings. She has come full circle foreign.
- [48:07]
A
Now that we're all facing the gift giving season, do you know what was voted the best gift for the year of 2024? And this is not just at My house. It's a legitimate thing.
- [48:19]
B
And what is it?
- [48:20]
A
Blissey pillowcases. I gave them to my kids last year. You know, you give your kids things and you don't know if they're actually going to use them. But my son sent me pictures of his apartment. There's his blissy pillowcases on his bed. And I was like, you're using them? Okay, I'll get you spare. I love my blissy pillowcases. My hair has never looked better. My skin looks terrific. And if I get hot in the middle of the night, the blissy pillowcase always feels like the cool side of the pillow.
- [48:49]
B
Silk is better than satin. Satin is often made from synthetics. It's rough on your hair and your skin. But silk now is naturally hydrating. It keeps your skin moisturized all night. It's also antibacterial and hypoallergenic. Important for me also. You can sling them in the washing machine. And they survive.
- [49:12]
A
They absolutely do. And there's 99 colors available, so you can find a color to match any decor.
- [49:19]
B
Over 3 million have been sold. And we love it. It keeps the frizz away from both wavy mermaid hair and curly susan hair.
- [49:27]
A
We've talked about blissey pillowcases before. We've told you how much we love them. Now's your time. Because you're a listener. Blissy is offering 60 nights risk free, plus an additional 30% off when you shop@blissey.com historychicks that's B L I S.
- [49:46]
B
S-Y.com historychicks and use code historychicks to get an additional 30% off. Your skin and hair will thank you.
- [50:04]
In 1979, the Creek Nation amended its constitution to require, quote, descent from Indian by blood, unquote, which of course, immediately barred the descendants of the freedmen from tribal membership and all the benefits thereof after a hundred years of having had it. But as recently as July of this year, 2025, the Creek, or Muskogee, which is the overarching name of the whole group, their supreme court struck down the 1979 rule and began reinstating the descendants of the freedmen. At last, last month, as I AM speaking again October 2025, this section of Euclid Avenue that the rector mansion sits on was renamed Sarah Rector way. There is now a plaque outside of her house, and there are groups working toward official historical registration of the property and also turning it into a museum and preservation. As for media, the book that you absolutely have to check out is searching for Sarah Rector, the richest black Girl in America by Tanya Bolden. Except no substitutes. I have to tell you there is a troubling situation with regard to I'm going to call it AI books that are scraping information and slapping it in to really, I mean, I don't want to say half half Alec is what I'll say research material so I can advocate that book. You'll find a lot more on places like Amazon that honestly I found a troubling amount on this subject. Specifically, there is a wide open space for a children's book about Sarah Rector if anyone is so inspired. There are none that I could find and that was very surprising to me. Perhaps with Sarah Rector's increased visibility will be some emerging. But act now. Act now. Two books I can recommend for background on this subject. A brutal Andrew Jackson the Creek Indians and the Epic War for the American south by Peter Cozens. For a little background on what happened during the Trail of Tears. And then a book called the Five Civilized Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw Creek and Seminole by Grant Forman. Know that this was originally written, however in the 1930s. There has been some commentary that it is a little bit paternalistic in tone, just so you know that. But this particular person is a well known, well respected researcher. In fact, there is an entire website dedicated to transcripts of documents that he spent his life working on at the Oklahoma Historical Society. And I will give you a link. So he, he comes with good credentials. Just the tone might be a little abrasive for modern ears. There is a movie out just this month called Sarah's Oil, a dramatization of the early years. The movie ends with the first oil strike. So you won't get any Kansas City, you won't get any glamour, you won't get any High Life. You certainly wouldn't get any Count Basie. I'm sure that saved on on the budget too. Not to have to decamp here. I'm glad I saw it. And the girl who plays Sarah, whose name is Desier Johnson, is really good. Really good. Zachary Levi is the other main character. If you like Disney's Tangled, he was Flynn Rider or he was in the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. So both of those actors were very, very good. It was just me and two other people in this entire theater and the other two people left halfway through. So I don't know. I don't know. Use your best judgment. It's a good introduction. Having just seen that movie, Sarah's Oil, there is a character that seems to come sort of out of nowhere and in fact did not have really anything to do with Sarah's story, But I see why they included her. And so I wanted to give you a tiny mini biography of someone that was important during this period in Oklahoma's history. Kate Barnard was born in 1875 in Nebraska, and her mother died when she was an infant. She grew up moving from place to place with her father, and by her teenage years, she had settled in Oklahoma and began work as a teacher, which gave her a window into the struggles of the poor families of her students. She was inspired to embark on a lifelong commitment to social justice. She began to work with charitable organizations in Oklahoma City, and these experiences convinced her that government had a responsibility to protect those most vulnerable. And when Oklahoma held its constitutional convention in 1906, Barnard lobbied delegates to include progressive measures like compulsory education, restrictions on child labor, and prison reforms. And many of her ideas actually made it into the state's constitution. And then her historic election in 1907, when she was just 32, Kate Barnard became the very first woman elected to statewide office in Oklahoma. She was actually one of the very first in the entire United States. Definitely a pioneer. She was chosen as the state's commissioner of charities and corrections. That's a position that oversaw prisons, orphanages, and public institutions. Everyone looked around and knew that she was the perfect person for this job. She didn't waste any time exposing abuses in the prison system. She pushed for more humane treatment of inmates. Specific to this episode, she fought for the rights of native American orphans, and she uncovered guardians, schemes to steal land and resources. She also championed labor protections. She believed, of course, that poverty and exploitation were not just bad for the person in question, but widespread social problems that demanded public solutions. I'm sorry to say there was massive backlash for her, quote, interference from powerful business and political interests, and she, in a matter of about eight years, couldn't continue in public office. She, however, showed that women could operate, lead, create legislation, and demand reform at the very highest levels of government. She was a great role model for those that came after her. And this all in a time before women had the vote. Kate Barnard died in 1930 at the young age of 54. But today, she is remembered as a woman who used her voice and her office to fight for those who had no voice of their own. Thanks for indulging me. I'm not sure we'll ever have enough material to do a full episode on Kate Barnard, so we thought it was important to include her here. And now back to media for our original subject. Thanks so much to the Kansas City Public Library for giving me access to the archives of the Call newspaper, which is still in production by the way, here in Kansas City. It's amazing how much I could find out there just by searching different keywords. There are other links I will give you, for example, the history of the city of Taft, the interest that the NAACP had for Sarah Rector, and then also very cool, the Martin City Telegraph, which is a little town just south of here, has articles about Sarah Rector in which the author, Diane Houston, was able to speak to family members, members of Sarah Rector and get more of a behind the scenes look of what her life was really like and stories that were maybe only told within the family. I highly recommend those articles and I will send you a link there too. And that will do it for our coverage of the life of Sarah Rector. Happy Thanksgiving. If you are hearing this right when it comes out, we are about to indulge in some caloric intake of our own. Thanks for listening. Bye. If you learned something today, please tell a few friends or leave a review for us on Apple podcasts or your favorite podcatcher. I must confess, I am not going to get to the Pinterest board unless I can do it on the road to our Thanksgiving location. But never despair. I can be a highly motivated person on a road trip and the song at the end is Rich by Mind Me. We'll see you next time.
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C
I had a dream once I kept it close.
- [59:29]
It seems so important to have it all then.
- [59:37]
I used to believe that I needed to be someone to actually be someone Everyone else seem to get it right.
- [59:51]
But now I'm the cool kid of weird not chasing superficial things that's clear Ooh, I've got cool friends that strand they always see through them.
- [60:07]
That'S why I am rich.
- [60:20]
Isn't it funny?
- [60:25]
Looking back all I see is signs.
- [60:33]
I never needed what they expected of me.
- [60:41]
All I ever needed was me to believe in my God Telling me I don't want that life or all the things you're supposed to like.
- [60:55]
B
But.
- [60:55]
C
Now I'm the cool kid of weird not chasing superficial things that's clear Ooh, I've got cool friends Ditch trends They always see through them.
- [61:11]
That'S why I am rich.
- [61:16]
Do I got no money? No, no, no I am rich Ed.
- [61:24]
Isn'T it funny.
- [61:45]
Today I can stand my ground hold my breath Be at ease and do what matters to me.
- [61:59]
That'S why I am rich.