A Young Black Millionaire Forced Into Hiding
Black History Year
PushBlack
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2020
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“I remember hearing somebody describe freedom as the ability to wake up in the morning and decide what you want to do with your day.” Dr. Boyce Watkins, founder of the Black Business School, has plenty to say about personal freedom, Black liberation, and self-determination. For Watkins, black economic advancement can’t be reduced to whether you are for, or against, capitalism, socialism or any other “ism.” Instead, it’s about wielding economic opportunities to empower ourselves and our people.
Black History Year is produced by PushBlack, the nation’s largest non-profit Black media company. Obviously, the power that comes from knowing our history is important to you. PushBlack exists because we saw we had to take this into our own hands. You make PushBlack happen with your contributions at BlackHistoryYear.com. Most people do 5 of 10 bucks a month, but everything makes a difference. Thanks for supporting the work. Production support from Mikel Ellcessor and Jessica Rugh Frantz from Limina House and Sasha Kai Parker as editor/sound designer, with the PushBlack team: Tareq Alani, Brooke Brown, Eskedar Getahun, Abeni Jones, Patrick Sanders, and Cydney Smith.
Useful links:
Dr. Boyce Watkins of the Black Business School
Official Black Wall Street: The Black Wall Street Story
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | One headline read, |
| 0:02.0 | Little Sarah is a member of the Plut class. |
| 0:06.0 | Another read, |
| 0:08.0 | Oil made Piccaneity rich. |
| 0:11.0 | But the most heartbreaking was find Sarah Rector. |
| 0:18.0 | I'm Jay from Push Black. |
| 0:19.0 | You're listening to Black History Year. |
| 0:21.0 | Let me tell you about Sarah Rector. |
| 0:23.2 | John Rector and his family were Creek Friedman. These were black folks who had been |
| 0:37.1 | enslaved by the Muskogee Creek Tribe. After the Civil War, the U.S. forced the Native American tribes who'd enslave black folks to grant them two things. |
| 0:47.0 | Tribal membership and land. |
| 0:50.0 | By 1902, John Rector and his wife were sitting on a whole lot of land in Taft, Oklahoma. |
| 0:57.5 | Taft was about 60 miles from what would become the most famous town in black economic history, the Greenwood District in Tulsa, you may know it as Black Wall Street. |
| 1:10.0 | The directors lived a modest life and they were deeply committed to their children's future. |
| 1:15.0 | Thinking to the future, the rectors gifted the land of Sarah and her two siblings. |
| 1:20.0 | Unfortunately, the best land in the area was reserved for whites and Native Americans. |
| 1:25.0 | So Sarah's land was useless. |
| 1:27.0 | It was filled with rocks. It was useless for farming. |
| 1:30.0 | Farming was how the rectors sustained themselves. |
| 1:33.0 | John was quite enterprising though. |
| 1:35.4 | He managed to sell one parcel of the land for the equivalent of about 40 grand in today's |
| 1:40.9 | money. |
... |
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