Sarah Rector - shoulder bag

Honey mustard is a flavor that is a cross between sweet and warm mustard. This leather shoulder bag  is just that . A cross between sweet and warm with a comforting feel It's a one of a kind measuring  12" X 17" with a shoulder strap measuring 14 1/2" long. With a full bodied exterior pocket and a smaller interior pocket also of leather. A circular bottom forms the bag and a snap closure for the top.

Sarah Rector,  (March 3, 1902 – July 22, 1967) was an American oil magnate who was known as the "Richest Colored Girl in the World"
Sarah Rector was born in 1902 in Oklahoma in Indian Territory. Some Native Americans had owned slaves and Sarah’s family lived on Muscogee Creek Indian land. When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, the Dawes Allotment Act divided the land between the Creek Indians and their former slaves. Everyone in Sarah’s family received land.  Sarah was allotted 159.14 This was a mandatory step in the process of integration of the Indian Territory with Oklahoma Territory to form what is now the State of Oklahoma.   The land was considered inferior infertile soil, not suitable for farming, with better land being reserved for white settlers and members of the tribe. The family lived simply but not in poverty; however, the $30 annual property tax on Sarah's parcel was such a burden that her father petitioned the Muskogee County Court to sell the land. His petition was denied because of certain restrictions placed on the land, so he was required to continue paying the taxes.

So he leased Sarah’s portion to the Devonian Oil Company of Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania  . Two years later in 1913, an oil driller (Standard oil) brought in a “gusher” yielding 2500 barrels of oil a day. Sarah was earning so much money that guardianship was changed from her parents to T.J. Porter, a white man. More wells produced even greater amounts of oil and in October of that year she earned $11,567.00($354,444.00 in 2023).

In 1914, an African American journal, The Chicago Defender, began to take an interest in Rector, just as rumors began to fly that she was a white immigrant who was being kept in poverty. The newspaper published an article claiming that her estate was being mismanaged by the white guardians of the estate.  This caused  Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois  was concerned about her welfare. Is it not possible to have her cared for in a decent manner and by people of her own race, instead of by a member of a race which would deny her and her kind the treatment accorded a good yard dog?

 This prompted Du Bois to establish the Children's Department of the NAACP, which would investigate claims of white guardians who were suspected of depriving black children of their land and wealth.In October of that year, she was enrolled in the Children's School, a boarding school at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, headed by Washington. Upon graduation, she attended Tuskegee Institute.Rector was already a millionaire by the time she had turned 18 in 1920. She owned stocks, bonds, a boarding house, businesses, and owned a 2,000-acre piece of prime river bottomland. At that point, she left Tuskegee and, with her entire family, moved to Kansas City, Missouri. She purchased a house on 12th Street, known as the Rector House, which is currently owned by a local nonprofit.