Little Sarah Rector, a former slave, became one of the richest little girls in America in 1914. Rector had been born among the Creek Indians, as a descendant of slaves. She would belong to a group of children that the government referred to as the Creek Freedman minors - not legally considered African-American. 

Rector became an orphan after her mother died of tuberculosis, and her father died in prison. Like most children of Indian territory, she was kept in the care of a white guardian who was responsible for her money and education. But her life changed in 1914, as a result of an earlier land treaty from the government. Back in 1887, the government awarded the Creek minors children 160 acres of land, which passed to Rector after her parents' deaths. Though her land was thought to be useless, oil was discovered in its depths in 1914, when she was just 10 years old.

The headlines would read: “Oil Made Pickaninny Rich – Oklahoma Girl With $15,000 A Month Gets Many Proposals – Four White Men in Germany Want to Marry the Negro Child That They Might Share Her Fortune.”

Then an issue of the Salt Lake Telegram reported how she and her siblings still lived in poverty. Still, young Rector kept her fortune to herself and used it to fund her education to Tuskegee University. Little is known about her life thereafter, except that she purchased a mansion on Twelfth Street in Kansas City, Missouri and entertained the likes of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Joe Louis and Jack Johnson at lavish parties.

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