Sarah's Riches

From award-winning author Tonya Bolden comes the remarkable true short story about the turn of fortune that made teenage Sarah Rector the wealthiest Black girl in Jim Crow–era America.

Sarah’s story is now a major motion picture from Amazon MGM Studios.

In the new state of Oklahoma, young Sarah Rector was among the Black citizens of the Creek Nation granted land allotments. Her property seemed worthless—a distant plot fifty miles from her family’s two-room shack. Then oil was discovered, and eleven-year-old Sarah’s land was producing 2,500 barrels of oil per day. The sudden wealth transformed her family’s circumstances, moving them from poverty to prosperity.

But such wealth in Black hands drew unwanted attention. The press spread sensational, often racist headlines nationwide. Corrupt officials, ruthless oil barons, and opportunistic swindlers abounded, taking advantage of landholders who never imagined the level of wealth that came from black gold.

This is the remarkable true story of how oil changed everything for a Black girl and her family in early-twentieth-century America. From humble beginnings to a mansion where she later entertained Duke Ellington, Sarah Rector’s journey illuminates a unique chapter in American history—when sudden oil wealth collided with the racial restrictions of the Jim Crow era.