In a strange twist, Sarah’s guardian contracted with Joe Rector to transport lumber and build a structure in the summer of 1915 on farmland bought with Sarah’s funds, meaning, in essence, that Sarah had hired her father. More troubling, the guardians paid Joe only $30 — roughly $775 today — for three months of backbreaking work. Even using Sarah’s money to pay a member of her family
he automobile was near-totaled, a jumble of hubcaps, spark plugs and gaskets that racked up a repair bill adding up to $2,200 in today’s value. Sarah was unscathed. The accident, though, struck an ominous note for her future. As Sarah ticked closer to 18 years old, when her authority over her money by right should increase, opportunists dug in their heels. The latest pair of court-authorized bureaucrats to oversee her purse strings had gone behind Sarah’s back and signed a contract in her name that extended a lease she had on oil-rich land mined by the Prairie Oil & Gas Company. The conspicuous timing was glaring: the contract was set to expire after she was already a legal adult. The extended lease was not a fiscally sound move. The price guaranteed ($300,000 — roughly $5 million today) did not match the market’s trends. Sarah stood to lose money compared to what she could have earned by renegotiating a new contract at the end of the original lease. The entities poised to profit were her guardians and the mining company.
Then, Rose, Sarah’s mom, petitioned a court to declare her daughter incompetent to manage her estate, while an uncle would prepare a claim to the court that Sarah was squandering her money. One likely possibility was that the team of guardians had manipulated Mama Rose into filing her petition, convincing her Sarah was in over her head and needed intervention. Though the maneuvers were short-lived, the walls seemed to be closing in, and the Rector family itself was at risk of being torn apart.
Another shadow fell, according to a lawyer involved with the Rector family, in a renewed fear that one or more kidnapping plots surfaced to try to ransom Sarah for her wealth.
Then a bombshell landed in the papers: mere hours after turning 18, Sarah announced to the court that she voluntarily forfeited control of all her money to two trustees. “The spirits might get it,” Sarah explained her decision cryptically in a public statement. “Spirits” could have referred to evil spirits, and in The Chicago Defender’s interpretation, particularly “paleface” spirits. “Millionairess for three hours,” a white reporter wrote, as though with a chuckle, inferring that even Sarah herself finally had admitted that a Black girl could not manage such wealth. The dream died. Sarah had surrendered.
But it had all been a feint.
After the press gleefully declared Sarah had yielded control of her fortune, those trustees transferred all her money right back to her and stepped away from the case for good. Reams of court documents reveal only fragments of what happened behind the scenes. But a scenario of events presents itself that nicely fits the evidence:
A rift developed among Sarah’s financial guardians between those who supported her becoming independent and those who refused to let go of their own stakes in her assets. These entrenched guardians had the advantage of the power and respect accorded to them by the legal system that was withheld from Sarah. She had to find a way to coax them — or trick them — into walking away.
A secret agreement with those trustees who were her allies could be the key. She could voluntarily yield control to those allies and be very public about it — deploying the reporters that had so often plagued her in order to report the arrangement far and wide in the press. This warded off the sharks who had been waiting, through her relatives or otherwise, to try to seize control. By beating them to the punch, Sarah froze their machinations long enough to quietly take control herself before anyone noticed. It took months for that last masterstroke to be reported in the press, and by that time Sarah’s money was really hers — for the very first time.
“Sarah Rector Her Own Boss,” one newspaper, edited by one of her now-displaced guardians, declared simply. She had outwitted them all. She had not been the gullible and “bewildered” girl. One observer declared high school-aged Sarah a “financial genius.”
Image for post
Image for post
Having seen the power of liquid gold in his daughter’s case, Joe Rector searched for a chance to contribute to his family’s wealth without the unjust constraints that had been imposed by the legal system onto Sarah. Joe, promised princely profits by a friend, perked up at an investment scheme in oil wells in Mexico. But Joe’s friend betrayed him, leaving him stranded in another country, penniless, embarrassed and defeated. On the train ride home, Joe fell ill and died, supposedly of a broken heart.
Image for post
Image for post
Sarah was devastated. Although she was only 20 years old, she took her place as the head of the family. She funded siblings’ educations and repaired any rift with her mother. She fended off scammers and con artists trying to stake claims to her money. When she was ready to marry, she chose a husband; he wasn’t chosen by a matchmaking club or by the press. The fairytale of wealth and privilege may have been just that — a fairytale — but Sarah was now an astute and deft investor and real estate developer with properties across several cities and towns in two states.
There was reason to take particular pride in one of those impressive properties, the Fike Building on South Second Street in downtown Muskogee, Oklahoma. It was a truly grand specimen of architecture, with 13-inch-thick walls and Carthage stone trimmings, towering two stories high and spanning practically an entire city block. It was so big that six successful storefronts lined the first floor and a boarding house with accommodations to room at least 40 guests occupied the upstairs level. The previous owner, Bob Fike, reportedly refused to rent out any space to Black businesses. Now Sarah owned the entire structure.
By one account, around the same time Joe Rector passed away, one of Sarah’s brothers was taken into jail in Kansas City on a whim by white police officers. Sarah, wearing an imported gown, showed up to free him. Sarah said three words that conveyed power and confidence and put them on their heels, words hard to envision when thinking back to the little girl who had hid under a bed and refused to have her photo taken. Words that meant, in no uncertain terms: do not underestimate me.
“I’m Sarah Rector.”
Credit given to writer Laura N Henley
source
https://medium.com/truly-adventurous/the-richest-black-girl-in-america-ca8aebe054dc
The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
