#BUBBLE TROUBLE MUSKOGEE OK MANUAL#
On this particular day, August 29, 1913, Sarah continued the demanding manual labor that helped support her family. The allotment might change from a dreadful burden to a tolerable inconvenience. The lease offset some of the tax payments, and came with a royalty if a splash or two of oil happened to be found. Joe decided to lease Sarah’s land to an oil company. However hard Joe tried, it seemed that he was stuck with them. He petitioned the Muskogee County Court to authorize a sale of a few hundred dollars, but no buyer could be found. Joe Rector, a hard worker who protected the best interests of his family, wanted nothing to do with his children’s allotments. Sarah’s plot was called “a rocky piece of wasteland” by one observer. The properties given to Black residents tended to have uncultivable soil and a hefty annual tax bill. Sarah’s allotment was almost 100 miles northwest of their town, too far away from the family’s farm to be practical.
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That meant Sarah and her eldest siblings were eligible to be added to the Creek Nation’s Freedmen Roll, which under federal law entitled them to receive free land allotments.įor the most part, the program was a misplaced band-aid on centuries of mistreatment. Like many other Black families from Oklahoma, the Rectors’ ancestors had been enslaved by the Creek tribe. Beyond these, most other professions were simply off-limits to poor and working-class Black women. If she were lucky, she could become a teacher in a segregated and underfunded local school. For a young girl like Sarah, her realistic prospects in life might be limited to backbreaking domestic work or agricultural labor. There were two mortgages on their property, putting it at risk of foreclosure. They were relegated to the poorest parts of town, to the most menial lifestyle, and to degrading reminders of the long shadow of slavery. They were Black farmers in the heart of Jim Crow America.
This was the Rector family’s life, and there was little exceptional about it for this time and place. Sarah, her siblings, dad Joe, and mom Rose would repeat this cycle day in and day out in the summer of 1913 until a sea of bulbous whiteness would stretch out before them.
She wasn’t much taller than the cotton plants surrounding her. It was another hot August in rural Oklahoma - hot enough for her barefoot soles to grow numb from the scorching dirt. She had to squint to block out the radiating sun. Sarah Rector, 11, stood up and wiped her hands on her sweat-soaked shift, a simple loose dress. The untold story brought to life from thousands of pages of archival documents. Henley When an 11-year-old Black girl in Jim Crow America discovers a seemingly worthless plot of land she has inherited is worth millions, everything in her life changes - and the walls begin to close in.
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