Sarah Rector, have you heard of her? If not, you’re not alone: most people haven’t either. Nonetheless, at 12, she became an overnight billionaire in 1914.
Fearing that a small black child would become one of the country’s wealthiest people, the government legally declared her white. This is her story.
Slaves in the United States were freed following the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. While blacks could no longer be forced to work for free, racism and discrimination kept them from doing and having things that white people did.
