"Jake Simmons Jr."(January 17,1901-March 24,1981)

Was the first international African-American oil man in the United States to become the most successful and most recognizable African-American entrepreneur in the

history of the petroleum industry.As an internationally known oil broker he partnered with Philips Petroleum Company and Signal Oil & Gas Company to open up African Oil fields in Liberia,Nigeria,and Ghana.In 1969 he became the first African-America to be appointed to the National Petroleum Council.He often applied Booker T.Washington's principles to his business practices.Jake was born in Native America Territory,at Sawokla,which later became Haskell.He emerged from a creek freedman heritage to broker multimillion dollar deals between large oil companies and emerging African nations.His maternal great-grandfather,Cow Tom,once a slave of a Creek Native America,served as an interpreter for the Creek in dealing with the U.S. government after the Civil War and afterward a leader (chief) for many of the newly freed Creek slaves.Upon the uprooting of the Creek nation,many of the former slaves became wealthy landowners in the Tulsa,area,leasing their lands for oil expoloration at the turn of the century.Jake Sr.owned a large ranch in the Haskell area.Jake Sr.prosperity captured the attention of Booker on one of his trips to Oklahoma.Booker stayed on one of his trips to Oklahoma.He stayed an evening at the ranch sold both father and son on the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.JakeJr.,graduated from Tuskegee in 1919.After Tuskegee he married Melba Dorsey and worked in Detroit.By 1920 he had divorce Melba and moved back to Oklahoma,marry Willie Eva Flowers.In the 1920s he began brokering oil deals in eastern Oklahoma.During the hard times of the depressed 1930s he turned to real estate,selling farms around Muskogee to African Americans in East Texas who had made money in the new oil boom.The poor quality of the land in East Texas,as well as the area's pervasive discrimination and violence,helped him convince many African-American to move to Oklahoma.In the 1960s Jake began brokeing large deas with African countries,begining with Liberia.He worked as a partner for Philips Petroleum Company and later for Signal Oil & Gas Company.Always active in Civil rights, he pursued an early court case against separate schools in a 1938 suit under his wife's name,Simmons v.Muskogee Board of Education. In March 1939 the Supreme Court dismissed the Simmons' appeal from the U.S. District Court.Jake acted as a leader in the local NAACP and served as state conference president from 1962 until 1968.He also served as a member of the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Commission,presided over the Negro Business League,and participated in the influential National Petroleum Council.Jake died in Tulsa.His children Jake Simmons III,a former undersecretary of the U.S. Interior,Donald,an economist who took over Simmons Royalty Company,Blanche,a social worker,and Kenneth a Harvard educated professor,of architecture at the University of California.Berkeley.