Sarah.

Baby girl.

This world ain't always been easy for folks like us.

Especially out here on this land.

The land that they forced us to walk on till our feet bled.

Made us cry until our hearts turned to stone.

The Trail of Tears.

Your great grandmother, she walked it.

That pain, that’s in our roots.

But today, something different happened.

They say you own land and not just dirt land.

It’s like oil land.

The kind of land that white folks fight over.

Black gold.

Am I going to be in the papers?

You already are, baby girl.

They calling you rich now.

You richer than all the white folks in the country.

What, you got up under that land is more than fuel.

It’s power.

I just wanted a pony.

Listen.

You going to notice that folks is going to treat you different.

Some of them going to smile on your face, showing all they teeth, but lying behind the eyes.

And others?

Others going to be afraid of you.

Afraid that a little black girl can have what they could never even dream of.

But I want you to remember this.

Having money, being rich.

It don't make you better than nobody.

And being poor it don't make you no worse.

Our family.

We come from pride and strength.

What you do with this, it proves that you Rector.

I won't forget, daddy.

Now, I know I'm not the one that the court chose to guide your money.

But I'm always guide your soul.

As long as I'm breathing, you're going to always have the truth.

You hear me?

Go on and go to bed.

You got a big life waiting on you.

I can't believe Sarah Rector lived such an incredible life.

You mean Aunt Sister?

Aunt Sister was the truth, now you’re talking about style and grace... And she wasn't only rich, she owned her story.

And her story goes all the way back.

Really?

To the Trail of Tears.

Sarah Rector’s family was enslaved by Native American tribes, specifically the Creek Indians.

In the 1830s, a lot of these tribes were relocated to Oklahoma or Indian Territory.

When Sarah's family arrived, they were obviously still enslaved.

It took a treaty in 1866 that actually freed them.

And in that treaty, they also included land allotments.

So Sarah Rector and her older sister Becky, and her younger brother Joe all received part of these land allotments, along with her parents.

Her life completely changed when they struck oil.

They were producing, what, 250 barrels a day.

At one point she was making $300 a day and her cut was only 12.5%.

Here's a question I have.

Why was it so hard for Sarah to control her own money?

Oh, good question.

Well, Black people weren't supposed to have land and have money.

So she was assigned a guardian.

But the Guardian couldn't be her mother couldn't be her father.

The guardian kept track of all of her money.

Every penny that was spent, every single bit.

And it was a guardian they trusted.

People of color that struck oil on their land were given white guardians.

They could speak for them, supposedly to give them some type of extra protection.

We know what this really is, which is taking advantage of a situation.

Joseph Rector, you are hereby ordered to appear before the Muskogee County Court regarding the state and guardianship of Minor Sarah Rector.

They didn't ask me.

They ordered me.

What does it say, daddy?

They say we gotta prove that a black girl can be rich without permission.

The land had history long before money had even touched it.

Yeah, and courts was as greedy as the oil men.

Do remember that, Sarah.

It's not just about her being rich.

I mean, this really made her powerful, too.

I can't believe that Sarah actually had to have someone help her manage her own money.

Please be seated.

Mr.

Porter, you and your client ready?

Yes we are, Your Honor.

How's the Mrs.

and the family?

Just splendid.

Right as rain.

Good to hear.

Appreciate it.

All right, court is now in session.

The court appoints Mr.

Porter as legal guardian of Ms.

Sarah Rector.

All matters of land, income and assets will be passed through his care.

You are still a minor Miss Rector... From the time she struck oil at age 11 until about 18.

She had three different guardians.

They were all appointed by the court.

They didn’t trust a black man to raise his own daughter or guide her future.

Said I didn't have no education, no experience.

But I had something no judge could buy.

Love.

For everything that Porter wanted to spend, wanted to invest for Sarah.

Everything had to go through the court before a single cent could be spent.

The matter of Sarah Rector's estate is closed.

Court is adjourned.

Most of her money was invested in properties and loans and leases in Oklahoma, because that's where she had spent the majority of her life up to that point.

Because there were so many powerful people that were willing to take advantage of her, even though she was just a little girl.

So Sarah accumulated so much wealth, but how does she use it to help educate herself?

Educationally, she did not go to college, as people want to say, She went to Tuskegee University.

Which she did not.

Nope, that's not right.

No, she went to Tuskegee like as a boarding school for about a year.

And after she went there, then she went to the boarding school on the campus of Fisk University for a couple of years.

Dubois sent a letter to Judge Thomas Leahy, which was the county court judge that was handling her probate case, saying he was concerned about him.

He he'd heard they were being mistreated, that she wasn't living in a proper house and all that kind of thing.

Sarah Rector is a ward of wealth and suspicion.

The guardianship placed upon her is not protection.

It is control.

They gave her father about $50 a month to take care of her.

They ended up building like a five room home.

Got a phonograph and a piano.

But then the headlines still across the nation were that she was sleeping on the floor.

Your accusations concerning the handling of Sarah Rector's estate are unsubstantiated.

The court has appointed appropriate guardians in line with state law.

No further commentary will be entertained.

From the stories that I hear, she was not mistreated.

She was loved by both parents.

When she wanted money, she asked for the court to give her money and the court gave it to her.

When she left Oklahoma to go to a boarding school, Booker T Washington School for children, which was on the campus of Tuskegee Normal Institute, Aunt Becky, Rebecca was sent with her because mama Rose didn't like the fact of sending Aunt Sister to a school away from Oklahoma by herself.

Yeah, and then she ended up really going to Fisk for just about two years and got kind of a liberal education there.

Then she made her way to Kansas City.

Then she stepped into her legacy.

That's right.

You guys, I have to head out, unfortunately.

You mean you're not staying for the food?

You know, I love a little fried fish.

Yeah.

If you think Aunt Sister sat on her wealth... well, you got it wrong.

Oh, she made plenty of noise.

Yeah, from what I’m hearing, she made, like, a lot of noise.

I've heard stories about these incredible parties that included the who's who of the time, like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jack Johnson, Mary Lou Williams, like all these famous people would gather there.

Are those stories true?

Those stories are true.

Let me take you back.

Hey, everybody.

Here comes Sarah.

Well, Ya’ll sure do know how to make a girl feel like royalty.

Welcome to the party.

All right.

How you doing?

Welcome.

Thank you, sir.

Welcome.

Now, I remember when they said I couldn't understand money.

Said I was just some poor colored girl from Indian Territory.

That I needed somebody to look after my land.

I said, sure, as long as they look from a distance.

Now, I didn't grow up in halls like this.

I grew up watching my daddy dig his hands in the dirt and pray that rain would come.

Now look at us, raining champagne and dancing in pearls.

Now don't get it twisted.

I ain't trying to be white.

I ain't trying to be anybody but Sarah Rector.

I just figured if they was going to give me money, I'll show them how good we can look when we ain't afraid to take up space.

You taken up all this space, Sarah?

Damn right I am.

Now, I bought this house to show girls like me.

We don't have to be ashamed of dreaming big.

I got six Cadillacs outside.

Not because I need them.

Because I could.

I wear mink in the summer.

I sip French wine in the winter.

And I throw parties just to remind myself that we ain’t the story they wrote for us.

Now come on, it's time to party.

Now, that's Mary Lou Williams over there.

If you haven't heard her play piano, you better catch up.

She going to change jazz forever.

And over there, Harlan Leonard himself.

Now, baseball fans.

I know you hear Josh Gibson over there talking nonsense.

You know, I hit one out of the park just for you, Miss Sarah.

I know you did.

And if you wonder where Langston Hughes is.

Well, don't worry.

He's probably in the corner somewhere, scribbling, taking lines from this very party.

Aunt Sister's love for Cadillacs, She's always had a Cadillac.

There was a lot of them that got fixed, too, because she wasn't really a good driver.

So I just want to know one thing.

The most important thing.

Does she have all that money when she got older?

You know, when she turned 18, she took full control of her money.

She wasn't required to have a guardian anymore.

So she wanted her money, and she took control of it.

And, baby, she knew exactly what to do with it.

That girl, she didn't just spend.

She showed out.

Yeah.

Emery Bird Thayer’s downtown.

It was a very ritzy shopping place for whites only with Aunt Sister having so much money.

Of course, you know, money talks.

There were times where Emery Bird Thayer would close their doors early to allow Aunt Sister and my grandmother to come into the store and try on dresses or anything they wanted to buy or try on.

Lord, I bet they already tripping over what to say when we walk in.

They probably going to think we lost.

Lost?

No.

We arrived.

Yes.

we did.

You see that.

That's that oil reflection money.

That make them blink twice money.

Oh, you know what?

I can only imagine what mama would think about us.

Oh, she’d believe it.

Mama told me I was going to stir the pot.

Well, let's go stir it then.

Yes, we will.

Oh, girl.

Look at that.

Oh, I can't wait to try it.

How many times have you been in here?

4 or 5 times.

This spaghehtti didn’t stand a chance.

Now, you know, the more you eat, the better the stories get.

I don't know about nobody else's family, but when we eat’in, we start telling.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Aunt Sister wasn't just rich, she was oil rich.

Cadillac rich.

Buy a hotel to eat lunch rich.

So what you're saying is she wasn't just rich.

She was rich, rich, rich.

And the thing is that money didn't change her.

Not in the way you think it would matter.

Oh, mama told us a story about her and the policeman.

Wait a minute.

Now, what does he do?

Some folks didn’t like seeing a black woman behind the wheel of something this time.

It didn’tmatter that I bought it fair and square.

Didn't matter I paid taxes bigger than his salary.

To him, I was a problem.

License and registration.

You seem puzzled.

Do you know who I am?

I'm Sarah Rector.

I own more land than your courthouse has case files.

I got oil in places your maps don't reach.

And I paid for this Cadillac with cash, before you ever saw one.

So unless you got more than confusion in your pocket, I'll be on my way.

Daddy always said walk like the ground owes you rent.

And I've been collecting ever since.

Oh, I wish I could have seen his face.

I bet his face was red as ketchup.

She wasn't scared?

No, she was her, her daddy's daughter.

Okay.

And a name that still means something today.

A whole lot of something.

She wasn't just riding around, showing off.

She know where she came from and what her folks went through.

Where she had land, she had acres of land, farmland.

And she didn't just own the land.

She actually worked the land.

And she helped manage it, too.

I remember the time about them geese.

Them geese would chase you, and them wings would be flapping.

And I'd be howling for Debby to rescue me.

And we was running.

You'd better run them geese would fight you.

Did they get you?

I'm still here.

I could run.

So, wait, man, I thought Sarah was a city girl?

Yeah.

You're trying to tell me she was on the farm?

Yeah.

She had on heels one day and boots on the next.

Her land was part of her heart and a gift from struggle.

All this land was given to us on paper.

We paid for it in blood, in tears.

In the silence of the trail.

Sometimes I walk these fields just to remember that I could.

That we won.

Even when they said we weren't supposed to.

The oil gave me power.

But the land they gave me peace.

Reminded me of daddy.

But what he said in that cabin.

To live not just rich, but real grounded.

We came from people who survived the impossible.

And every time I plant something, I feel their hands in mine.

She was famous in the city, but she was grounded like a country girl.

Even with all those Cadillacs, her soul lived in the Oklahoma dirt.

She was the bridge between struggle and legacy.

And she walked that bridge with grace.

Aunt Sister, she had the farm.

She had Cadillacs.

And she had the parties.

But you know, life don't let you keep everything.

She saw the hard times too.

Real hard.

That was during the time when oil prices dropped.

You know, she lost it.

And remember, she was a black woman managing it all with people watching, waiting for her to fail.

So please tell me she didn't lose it all did she?

Not everything, but most of it.

As she became an adult and did not have as much money as she had when she was a child.

People lost interest.

They never taught me how to fall with grace, only how to stand tall and look good doing it.

When she hit her 30s, she stopped partying nearly as much.

She wasn’t going to the jazz clubs in Kansas City.

There were some properties that she didn't get the taxes paid on them.

I wasn't reckless.

I gave, I invested.

I tried to build something bigger than me.

Eventually, if you don't take care of business and don't understand really what all you have, you will lose it or it dries up.

People came knocking for what they could get.

Some smiled in my face and stabbed me in the back.

I didn't forget daddy just got tired.

As she weathered the storm.

But she was not the same after.

She lived her life like royalty, but the sparkle in her eyes dimmed some.

The sad part is the world quit watching when the money dropped.

But you know she never gave up.

She never quit.

She never begged.

Well, just sounds like she was brave to me.

She was the bravest.

You know, I used to think money could fix everything.

But if you had enough of it, people would treat you right.

Doors would open.

Smiles would be.

Real.

But money don't change people.

It just reveals them.

If you ain't kind with it, you won't be kind without it.

And if you're lost without it, well, then you might just stay lost even when it comes.

I was much younger than y'all when they told me that I was rich.

But nobody gave me a book on how to hold on to it.

I had to learn by losing, and I lost a lot.

But I never lost who I was.

Now, don't get me wrong.

I love nice things, and I still do.

But it's not the things that make me who I am.

It's what I give, what I remember, what I survive.

And being smart with your money.

Now that's important.

You gotta learn to grow it.

Count it.

Protect it.

But being a good person, a whole person.

Well, that's more important.

You hear me?

Don't ever let this world twist you up.

Don't let nobody make you hard.

When you were born soft.

Don't let them make you cruel.

When your heart wants to be kind.

You stay good.

Down to your bones.

Down to the deepest part of your soul.

My daddy once told me.

Don't live rich.

Live full.

And I didn't know what he meant back then.

But I do now.

So go out there and live full.

Not just in your pocket, but in your heart.

In your spirit and how you treat people.

Because that right there, that's the kind of wealth that can't nobody take from you.