November 17, 2025 • 10 mins
When my daughter asked me why oil was such a big deal back in the day, I didn't have the answer -- so I went digging! What I found connects an 11-year-old Black girl's "worthless" land to the rise of modern America. This episode of IDKMYDE unpacks how curiosity, timing, and a little bit of oil turned one question into a story I couldn't believe I didn't already know!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Know it all to another episode of the most anticipated
podcast on the Black Effect Podcast Network entitled.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
I didn't Know Maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm your host B Dot aka King dot WSSU mister
Alumni twenty twenty five. And please, I cannot say this enough.
Make sure you go to the YouTube IDK Myde, make
sure you subscribe, like and comment, as Ryan says, And
on our Instagram, make sure you're following that IDK myde
(00:34):
with an underscore before it and after it. Now. Ryan
is my thirteen year old daughter. She says, she's a
senior in middle school because she's in the eighth grade.
And that's my stinker. But I love her very much.
She is very much a daddy's girl, and I love
everything about that. And if you are a parent of
a child in school, especially in North Carolina, you know
(00:55):
November is no school.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
November.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's like every week they're out a day of school,
and then Thanksgiving there out like three days. But most
recently they were out for a Veterans Day. And we
would like to say big shout to all of our
veterans that have served this country. We'll appreciate you so
much for your service here at IDK myde but whenever
she's out of school it's Daddy Daughter Day. Automatic the
(01:19):
last Daddy Daughter to Day. We found a zoo right
here in Charlotte. They had a liger. He was fourteen
years old, a tiger mixed with a lion. He was
freaking huge, and he had arthritis in his paws, and
he walked real slow like Shaquille O'Neill trying to sneak
to get some cookies. For Veterans Day, we had movie day.
We went to go see Stitchhead. It's a cartoon that
(01:42):
dropped on Halloween by the boy with a stitched head
and other monsters in a castle. But Stitchhead get to
go and form for the circus and then the monsters
have to come rescue him. I fell asleep, Ryan dozed off.
A little too kitty for our liking. I gave it
a five out of ten. Ryan gave it a seven
out of ten. But she's a I scored her now.
The second movie we went to see. I didn't even
(02:03):
know anything about the movie. Carla, my wife, she says,
did you hear about this Sarah's Oil? It's about this
eleven year old girl that found oil back in the
early nineteen hundreds. I said, it's a movie about that.
In season two of IDK NYDE the February edition, we
discussed Sarah Rector, but I dropped the ball. Though I
didn't do a whole episode on Sarah Rector, I just
(02:25):
mentioned her in a woman's episode. Had no clues a
movie about her. Ryan and I love Black history. She's
a big fan of the podcast, by the way, so
of course that was the second start to see Sarah's Oil.
We both give it eleven out of tens. It was amazing, y'all,
so powerful. The crazy thing is that the actress that
plays Sarah Rector, Naya de Sir Johnson, had an uncanny
(02:50):
resemblance to Ryan. Chocolate skin, hot cheek bones, unforgetable smiles,
dark brown eyes, which took me to a place cause
I'm like, damn, like I would have been her father
out there trying to protect my daughter while these crazy
Caucasians is trying to steal our land. So we're sitting
there watching the movie. We got some cheese sticks and
(03:10):
some chicken tenders. She snuck in some pop rocks. I
snuck in a butterfinger. We got the Chicago mixed style popcorn,
half caramel, half cheddar. She got a cherry icy, I
got a PEPSI feet up, reclined back, and we locked in.
And then she leans over to me. She said, Daddy,
why is oil so important? And that's what my ignorance
(03:30):
set in. I could not think of a real I said,
because if it makes gas, it does stuff with gas,
like to run the car.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Just watch the movie Sting. I'll talk to you about
it afterwards.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Now I'm half watching the movie, half talking to chat
GPT about why it was oil important in nineteen oh eight.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
So to kick off this episode, if I didn't know,
maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I have three of the most useless facts you'll never
need ever a day in life about oil. Up. First,
the very first modern oil whale was drilled in eighteen
fifty nine in Pennsylvania. Before that, they said, folks use
well fat for lamps.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
So yeah, oil.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Literally saved whales lives. Take that, Peter, your second useless fact.
One barrel of crude oil that's forty two gallons, and
that can make around nineteen gallons of gasoline and thousands
of other things like lipstick, plastic, even at basketball. My
sonne got nice dribbling. My son is nineteen. He's a
(04:31):
freshman over at Livingstone College. He played basketball. He's doing
very well. I would just like to let you know.
I'll keep you updated. And your third useless fact, the
United States has more oil per day than any other country,
over twenty million barrels a day. They said, that's more
than the next three countries combined. Those have been your
(04:53):
three useless facts about oil. The very first modern oil
whale was drilled in eighteen fifty nine in Pennsylvania. One
barrel of oil is forty two gallons and can make
around nineteen gallons of gas, and the United States uses
twenty million barrels a day, which is more than the
next three countries combined. So to get into this episode,
(05:13):
I would like to ask you a question. One do
you know who Sarah Rector is?
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Two?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Do you know why oil was so important? And three
did you even know that there was a movie called
Sarah's Oil? Because I didn't. I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
I didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
So the story takes place in Oklahoma, that's where Sarah
Rector was born nineteen oh two, and there was a
Creek nation there. Her family were Creek freedmen. They were
descendants of the enslaved folks who've been part of that
Creek nation, and each freedman child was given land.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Sarah's one hundred sixty.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Eight because was described as worthless, dry, rocky, good for nothing.
And honestly, when I heard that, it reminded me of
what they did to Fam You in Florida. See, if
you're not familiar, Tallahassee, Florida is built of like seven hills, right,
you know, like it's real hilly.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
See.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Fam You was found at October third, eighteen eighty seven,
but they got relocated in eighteen ninety one to high
Wood Plantation. Now high Wood Plantation was the highest hill
in Tallahassee, but it was filled with all types of
wildlife and most abundantly was the rattlesnakes.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
That's why the mascot is Venom, and Fam You are
the rattlers. See.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
They gave fam You that land because it was barren, worthless,
they thought. But Fam You, as Black folk, do turn
that space into one of the most prestigious spaces.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
In all of Florida.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
And now they pridefully say, fam you stands on the
highest of seven hills. Everywhere in Tallahassee, including Florida State University,
has to look up to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.
As was the same with Sarah Rector. They said them
one hundred and sixty acre she had was worthless. But
(07:11):
then one day in nineteen thirteen, they discovered some Texas
tea on that their land. Oil baby, and not just
a little bit. They call it a gusher. Sarah's wale
pumped about twenty five hundred barrels a day. Sarah wasn't
but eleven years old. She was making three hundred dollars
a day. That's over seven thousand dollars a day. In
(07:33):
twenty twenty five, she went for being a little black
girl on unfarmable land to being richer than the mayor,
the governor, and the bankers at eleven. Now, if I
could go back in time and sit back in that
movie theater beside Ryan, when she asked me why was
oil so important? I would tell her see the nineteen
hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds. That was a turning
(07:53):
point in America. That's when the Industrial Revolution was booming.
You've been learning about that in school. That's when factories
were switched from cold to oil because they say oil
ran cleaner, hotter, and longer than Henry Ford. You know
the cars we drive around Fords. In nineteen oh eight,
he dropped a car called the Model T. That was
the very first car sting. Now everybody wanted a car,
(08:16):
and cars needed gasoline. That means that that oil on
her land, it wasn't just black gou underground.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
It was the future.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Oil powered cars, factories, trains, even airplanes were used now.
Stain't like if there was no oil, there would be
no transportation. So when they found that money maker on
Sarah's land, it wasn't just luck.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
It was perfect timing.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Her one hundred and sixty acres turned into a gold
mine at the exact moment the world was running on oil.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Churches because that changed everything.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Her story shook the system because she was a black
child making more money than most white men in a
Jim Crow America. The newspapers didn't know what to do.
Some of them ran fake stories saying she was white.
The court tried to sign her a white guardian to
manage her wealth. Spoiler alert That is a huge part
of the movie. But thank god for black leaders we
(09:09):
had in that time, like Booker T.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Washington.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
He stepped in, represented her and made sure that her
money stayed in her pockets. By the time she turned eighteen,
Sarah was worth over a million dollars in today's money,
that's eleven million dollars. She owned land businesses, she had
a mansion, all from a piece of dirt that everybody
else said was useless. That's why you got to see
the movie, because she knew, she felt it in her spirit,
(09:34):
and she's eleven years old negotiating with grown white folk.
I just kept telling Stink, you see why you gotta
be smart.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Stink. When you're smart, you can out talk anybody.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Hold on, before we get up out of here, let
me get my sponsors. This episode is brought to you
by Little Miss LLC, the tutoring program that teaches young
black girls how to read right and read Negotia their allowance.
Because if Sarah Rector could handle oil contracts at eleven,
(10:06):
your baby can handle Eliminate stand merger by twelve. Little
Miss LLC, where Brilliants comes with receipts back to you
be do look. The moral of the story is go
see Sarah's oil and make sure you take your kids.
It's important that we show them how you don't have
to be an adult to be smart. You don't have
(10:27):
to be an adult to create change. And when your
kid look up to you and ask.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
You, why are we all in Portant.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You can tell them straight up because it powered the world,
It built empires, and for one little black girl in Oklahoma,
it changed history and I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Maybe you didn't either,
I welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Know it all to another episode of the most anticipated
podcast on the Black Effect Podcast Network entitled.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
I didn't Know Maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm your host B Dot aka King dot WSSU mister
Alumni twenty twenty five. And please, I cannot say this enough.
Make sure you go to the YouTube IDK Myde, make
sure you subscribe, like and comment, as Ryan says, And
on our Instagram, make sure you're following that IDK myde
(00:34):
with an underscore before it and after it. Now. Ryan
is my thirteen year old daughter. She says, she's a
senior in middle school because she's in the eighth grade.
And that's my stinker. But I love her very much.
She is very much a daddy's girl, and I love
everything about that. And if you are a parent of
a child in school, especially in North Carolina, you know
(00:55):
November is no school.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
November.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's like every week they're out a day of school,
and then Thanksgiving there out like three days. But most
recently they were out for a Veterans Day. And we
would like to say big shout to all of our
veterans that have served this country. We'll appreciate you so
much for your service here at IDK myde but whenever
she's out of school it's Daddy Daughter Day. Automatic the
(01:19):
last Daddy Daughter to Day. We found a zoo right
here in Charlotte. They had a liger. He was fourteen
years old, a tiger mixed with a lion. He was
freaking huge, and he had arthritis in his paws, and
he walked real slow like Shaquille O'Neill trying to sneak
to get some cookies. For Veterans Day, we had movie day.
We went to go see Stitchhead. It's a cartoon that
(01:42):
dropped on Halloween by the boy with a stitched head
and other monsters in a castle. But Stitchhead get to
go and form for the circus and then the monsters
have to come rescue him. I fell asleep, Ryan dozed off.
A little too kitty for our liking. I gave it
a five out of ten. Ryan gave it a seven
out of ten. But she's a I scored her now.
The second movie we went to see. I didn't even
(02:03):
know anything about the movie. Carla, my wife, she says,
did you hear about this Sarah's Oil? It's about this
eleven year old girl that found oil back in the
early nineteen hundreds. I said, it's a movie about that.
In season two of IDK NYDE the February edition, we
discussed Sarah Rector, but I dropped the ball. Though I
didn't do a whole episode on Sarah Rector, I just
(02:25):
mentioned her in a woman's episode. Had no clues a
movie about her. Ryan and I love Black history. She's
a big fan of the podcast, by the way, so
of course that was the second start to see Sarah's Oil.
We both give it eleven out of tens. It was amazing, y'all,
so powerful. The crazy thing is that the actress that
plays Sarah Rector, Naya de Sir Johnson, had an uncanny
(02:50):
resemblance to Ryan. Chocolate skin, hot cheek bones, unforgetable smiles,
dark brown eyes, which took me to a place cause
I'm like, damn, like I would have been her father
out there trying to protect my daughter while these crazy
Caucasians is trying to steal our land. So we're sitting
there watching the movie. We got some cheese sticks and
(03:10):
some chicken tenders. She snuck in some pop rocks. I
snuck in a butterfinger. We got the Chicago mixed style popcorn,
half caramel, half cheddar. She got a cherry icy, I
got a PEPSI feet up, reclined back, and we locked in.
And then she leans over to me. She said, Daddy,
why is oil so important? And that's what my ignorance
(03:30):
set in. I could not think of a real I said,
because if it makes gas, it does stuff with gas,
like to run the car.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Just watch the movie Sting. I'll talk to you about
it afterwards.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Now I'm half watching the movie, half talking to chat
GPT about why it was oil important in nineteen oh eight.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
So to kick off this episode, if I didn't know,
maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I have three of the most useless facts you'll never
need ever a day in life about oil. Up. First,
the very first modern oil whale was drilled in eighteen
fifty nine in Pennsylvania. Before that, they said, folks use
well fat for lamps.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
So yeah, oil.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Literally saved whales lives. Take that, Peter, your second useless fact.
One barrel of crude oil that's forty two gallons, and
that can make around nineteen gallons of gasoline and thousands
of other things like lipstick, plastic, even at basketball. My
sonne got nice dribbling. My son is nineteen. He's a
(04:31):
freshman over at Livingstone College. He played basketball. He's doing
very well. I would just like to let you know.
I'll keep you updated. And your third useless fact, the
United States has more oil per day than any other country,
over twenty million barrels a day. They said, that's more
than the next three countries combined. Those have been your
(04:53):
three useless facts about oil. The very first modern oil
whale was drilled in eighteen fifty nine in Pennsylvania. One
barrel of oil is forty two gallons and can make
around nineteen gallons of gas, and the United States uses
twenty million barrels a day, which is more than the
next three countries combined. So to get into this episode,
(05:13):
I would like to ask you a question. One do
you know who Sarah Rector is?
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Two?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Do you know why oil was so important? And three
did you even know that there was a movie called
Sarah's Oil? Because I didn't. I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
I didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
So the story takes place in Oklahoma, that's where Sarah
Rector was born nineteen oh two, and there was a
Creek nation there. Her family were Creek freedmen. They were
descendants of the enslaved folks who've been part of that
Creek nation, and each freedman child was given land.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Sarah's one hundred sixty.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Eight because was described as worthless, dry, rocky, good for nothing.
And honestly, when I heard that, it reminded me of
what they did to Fam You in Florida. See, if
you're not familiar, Tallahassee, Florida is built of like seven hills, right,
you know, like it's real hilly.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
See.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Fam You was found at October third, eighteen eighty seven,
but they got relocated in eighteen ninety one to high
Wood Plantation. Now high Wood Plantation was the highest hill
in Tallahassee, but it was filled with all types of
wildlife and most abundantly was the rattlesnakes.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
That's why the mascot is Venom, and Fam You are
the rattlers. See.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
They gave fam You that land because it was barren, worthless,
they thought. But Fam You, as Black folk, do turn
that space into one of the most prestigious spaces.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
In all of Florida.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
And now they pridefully say, fam you stands on the
highest of seven hills. Everywhere in Tallahassee, including Florida State University,
has to look up to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.
As was the same with Sarah Rector. They said them
one hundred and sixty acre she had was worthless. But
(07:11):
then one day in nineteen thirteen, they discovered some Texas
tea on that their land. Oil baby, and not just
a little bit. They call it a gusher. Sarah's wale
pumped about twenty five hundred barrels a day. Sarah wasn't
but eleven years old. She was making three hundred dollars
a day. That's over seven thousand dollars a day. In
(07:33):
twenty twenty five, she went for being a little black
girl on unfarmable land to being richer than the mayor,
the governor, and the bankers at eleven. Now, if I
could go back in time and sit back in that
movie theater beside Ryan, when she asked me why was
oil so important? I would tell her see the nineteen
hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds. That was a turning
(07:53):
point in America. That's when the Industrial Revolution was booming.
You've been learning about that in school. That's when factories
were switched from cold to oil because they say oil
ran cleaner, hotter, and longer than Henry Ford. You know
the cars we drive around Fords. In nineteen oh eight,
he dropped a car called the Model T. That was
the very first car sting. Now everybody wanted a car,
(08:16):
and cars needed gasoline. That means that that oil on
her land, it wasn't just black gou underground.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
It was the future.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Oil powered cars, factories, trains, even airplanes were used now.
Stain't like if there was no oil, there would be
no transportation. So when they found that money maker on
Sarah's land, it wasn't just luck.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
It was perfect timing.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Her one hundred and sixty acres turned into a gold
mine at the exact moment the world was running on oil.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Churches because that changed everything.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Her story shook the system because she was a black
child making more money than most white men in a
Jim Crow America. The newspapers didn't know what to do.
Some of them ran fake stories saying she was white.
The court tried to sign her a white guardian to
manage her wealth. Spoiler alert That is a huge part
of the movie. But thank god for black leaders we
(09:09):
had in that time, like Booker T.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Washington.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
He stepped in, represented her and made sure that her
money stayed in her pockets. By the time she turned eighteen,
Sarah was worth over a million dollars in today's money,
that's eleven million dollars. She owned land businesses, she had
a mansion, all from a piece of dirt that everybody
else said was useless. That's why you got to see
the movie, because she knew, she felt it in her spirit,
(09:34):
and she's eleven years old negotiating with grown white folk.
I just kept telling Stink, you see why you gotta
be smart.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Stink. When you're smart, you can out talk anybody.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Hold on, before we get up out of here, let
me get my sponsors. This episode is brought to you
by Little Miss LLC, the tutoring program that teaches young
black girls how to read right and read Negotia their allowance.
Because if Sarah Rector could handle oil contracts at eleven,
(10:06):
your baby can handle Eliminate stand merger by twelve. Little
Miss LLC, where Brilliants comes with receipts back to you
be do look. The moral of the story is go
see Sarah's oil and make sure you take your kids.
It's important that we show them how you don't have
to be an adult to be smart. You don't have
(10:27):
to be an adult to create change. And when your
kid look up to you and ask.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
You, why are we all in Portant.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You can tell them straight up because it powered the world,
It built empires, and for one little black girl in Oklahoma,
it changed history and I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Maybe you didn't either,
Host
Brian "B Daht" McLaughlin
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