This afternoon, the Kansas City Council will vote on an ordinance designating the block of Euclid Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets as “Sarah Rector Way” in honor of Sarah Rector, known as America’s first Black woman millionaire. The street designation is adjacent to her historic home, the Rector Mansion, at 2000 E. 12th Street.
Sarah Rector‘s remarkable story began when she inherited oil-rich land in Oklahoma as a child in the early 1900s, making her one of the wealthiest Black Americans of her time. She later moved to Kansas City, where the Rector Mansion became a landmark of Black prosperity and achievement.
This designation coincides with the Kansas City premiere of a feature film, Sarah’s Oil, about Rector’s life on October 29th.
Sarah Rector’s story had been misrepresented for decades, to the frustration of her relatives. Photos that appeared in newspapers were also not of her. Rector’s family members contacted historian Diane Euston to set the record straight…