Did you know that the richest Black person in the world in 1915 was a 10-11 year old Creek Freedgirl? By 1915, Sarah Rector was worth over $25.5 million dollars in today’s dollars.
She made an income twice as high as President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. Her income and wealth got to be so high that the state of Oklahoma’s white-dominated legislature attempted to pass a law reclassifying Sarah Rector as white.
Further, following her acquisition of wealth, she received marriage proposals from white men in the United States and around the world, at a time when interracial marriage was illegal, and at a pre-pubescent age.
Where did her wealth come from?
Her land allotment—which was originally considered to be of low value due to its lack of fertile ground—ended up being one of the most profitable land allotments in Oklahoma. Her land included vast oil wells that increased her wealth as a minor.
Although her land allotment had profitable oil wells and she was the wealthiest Black person in the world, she still lived in abject poverty for much of her childhood. In the summer of 1915, she lived in a “two-room box house on an Oklahoma prairie” with seven family members.
She slept on an armchair every night and her siblings slept on the floor. Despite her land allotment’s natural resources, she had no access to her wealth.
Instead, she was managed by a series of white male “guardians,” who were able to make decisions about how to invest
and spend her money and made decisions about her living arrangements. As described in a 1915 article in the Sapulpa Herald, “nearly all guardians, especially of big estates, are white men.” As guardians, white men invested Freedchildren’s land and wealth in ventures that would
benefit them personally and would also often sell Freedchildren’s land allotments without any consultation with their families. Through the implementation of minor guardianship laws, Freedpeoples’ land was controlled and managed by non-Native white men and Freedmen continued to
live in poverty, no matter the profits that their land allotments may have made.
Eventually, a judge required Sarah Rector’s guardian to arrange proper education opportunities and an upgraded home for her. She eventually moved to Kansas City, where she started a family and
enjoyed her wealth in her adulthood, outside of the bounds of guardianship laws.
Her acquisition of wealth demonstrates how land allotments greatly shaped Freedpeoples’ lives, as they were both able to gain unprecedented amounts of wealth from oil and also be forced to be under
the control of white male “guardians.” Further, the legislature’s reaction to her wealth demonstrates the importance of controlling Black wealth in enforcing and establishing white supremacy in Oklahoma.
Just to be clear, removing protections for a group that is actively being denied citizenship rights or who is being treated as a second class citizen because of their race is not a “mistake.” @RepDebHaaland co-sponsored a bill that removed protections for Freedmen of the
Five Tribes who are currently being either denied citizenship rights altogether due to their ancestors’ African ancestry and enslaved status or who are being denied services in their tribes due to that ancestry (Jim Crow and 3/5ths Compromise policies).
That isn’t a small mistake. That could literally mean the continuation of Jim Crow, segregation, and racism in Indian Country IF Ded Haaland does not change her position and do so publicly. In order to best service all Native people in this country, she needs to publicly
Just to be clear—we shouldn’t even have to be called Freedmen anymore. Our ancestors were freed from slavery over 150 years ago, but our tribes still label us that way 🤔 Even the Cherokee Nation, which accepts Freedmen as citizens, requires them to apply through a separate
“Freedmen” process. Why are we still being identified by the enslavement of our ancestors or by our African ancestry? We are Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles, and Cherokees and should be treated as such. People with 1/1024 blood quanta in the tribes are not separated into
different categories or called “white Cherokees” or “white Choctaws”. Even people who have evidence of their ancestors getting onto the By Blood Rolls by fraud are not separated from other tribal members but we are, based solely on our ancestors’ racial designations
The first Native American VP, Charles Curtis, was also the person who authored the Curtis Act, which dispossessed the Five Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Creek Nations) of their collective land. He supported “transitions” into dominate white society.
Is this the representation we want from @RepDebHaaland? As Freedmen, we do not want our descendants to look back and know that we stood idle while natives were pushed into positions of power that ultimately undermined Black Natives.
There is modern-day Jim Crow in Indian Territory against Black descendants of slaves owned by Native masters. @RepDebHaaland has supported policies that will allow these policies to continue.
“We are being discriminated against by our own Nation because we are Black.”
“Not because we’re Indians, but because we are Black, we have Black blood. We are counted every year for the money that they get for ALL the government programs and they vote us out every year of those programs.”
“Investigate our nation for the problem that they’re having right now with the Blackness of our skin and the crook in our hair. We ARE Seminoles and we will always be Seminoles. We were born Seminoles. We will die Seminoles and we stand with Seminole Nation.”
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but defending tribal systemic anti-Blackness as some assertion of “sovereignty” is not the serve you think it is. All you’re communicating to Black Natives is that you think we have no right to be a part of the decision-making process.
By equating anti-Blackness with tribal sovereignty, you communicate to us that we are not a part of the “sovereign Nation.” That somehow Black Natives are not really members of Native nations and that we should be relegated to compliance with what the non-Black majority wants.
When you kick us out of our tribes or preclude us from voting on so-called “sovereign” decisions, you’re really undermining your own sovereignty by removing entire populations from our nations. You’re slowly shrinking our nations and excluding some of the people most connected
Our ancestors were forced into Oklahoma by the federal government’s anti-Indigenous removal policies that forced the Five Tribes to walk the Trail of Tears. Our ancestors also would have never had to walk the Trail of Tears had their Indigenous masters not enslaved them.
As Afro-Indigenous descendants of enslaved people owned by Native masters, our relationships to the federal government and to our tribes are complex. Had it not been for the federal government’s intervention, our ancestors would’ve continued to be enslaved past 1866.
They were only freed from bondage in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations because the federal government strongly urged for the abolishment of slavery in Indian Territory following the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations’ loss with the rest of the Confederacy in 1866.