Staking a Claim: Jake Simmons and the Making of an African-American Oil Dynasty - Hardcover

Greenberg, Jonathan D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689117914 ISBN 13: 9780689117916

Publisher: Atheneum, 1990

Synopsis

Traces the life and career of the successful Black oil man, discusses his role as an intermediary in Africa, and describes his work on behalf of civil rights

About this title

From Library Journal

Greenberg, a freelance journalist, has written a thoroughly researched biography of the late Jake Simmons Jr., the most successful African-American entrepreneur in the history of the petroleum industry. Simmons's ancestors were slaves of the Oklahoma-based Creek Indian tribe, which treated their slaves with unusual dignity; this may have helped Simmons's ancestors to strike out on their own when given the opportunity. Upon the uprooting of the Creek nation, many of the former slaves became wealthy landowners in the Tulsa area, leasing their lands for oil exploration at the turn of this century. Simmons, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute, was greatly influenced by its founder and president, Booker T. Washington, and in addition to an analysis of Simmons's business expertise, Greenberg also details Simmons's civil rights activities. This is a complementary work to another African-American business biography, John H. Johnson's Succeeding Against the Odds ( LJ 6/1/89), and is highly recommended for most libraries.
-Gary D. Barber, SUNY at Fredonia Lib.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly

Starting with Simmons's farm childhood as a black member of an Oklahoma Creek Indian tribe, freelance journalist Greenberg's crisply written, sympathetic biography of the world's first internationally recognized black oilman credits much of Simmons's success to the principles of Booker T. Washington which he learned at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute, a vocational college for blacks. Later, as an oil broker and entrepreneur, Simmons, who died in 1981, opened up oil trading with emerging independent African states, serving as an intermediary between white American oil executives and politicians on both continents. The author also assesses Simmons's role as a civil rights activist and paterfamilias whose clan carries on the business he founded. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atheneum
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0689117914
• ISBN 13: 9780689117916
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 311