Jake Simmons, Jr.

Infobox Person
name = Jake Simmons Jr.


caption =
birth_date = birth date|1901|1|17
birth_place = Haskell, Oklahoma
death_date = death date and age| 1981 |3|24|1901|1|17
death_place = Tulsa, Oklahoma
other_names =
known_for =
occupation = oilman
nationality = United States

Joseph Jacob Simmons, Jr. (January 17 1901 – March 24 1981) was a prominent African American oilman. He "rose above humble beginnings to become the most successful and most recognizable black entrepreneur in the history of the petroleum industry."cite web
author = Marcia Shottenkirk
title = J.J. Simmons Jr., petroleum industry's most
publisher = The Journal Record
url = http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4182/is_20070227/ai_n18637672/print
date = Feb 27, 2007
accessdate = 2008-02-07 ] As an internationally known oil broker he partnered with Phillips Petroleum Company and Signal Oil and Gas Company to open up African oil fields in Liberia, Nigeria and Ghana.cite web
author = Larry O'Dell
title = SIMMONS, JAKE, JR.
publisher = Oklahoma Historical Society
url = http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/S/SI004.html
date =
accessdate = 2008-02-07 ] In 1969, he became the first black to be appointed to the National Petroleum Council.

Early life

Born in what later became Haskell, Oklahoma, Simmons was the ninth of ten children. His great-grandfather had been a slave of the Creek Indian tribe, and later became a chief as well as a leader for many of the freed Creek slaves. Simmons father owned a convert|500|acre|km2|sing=on ranch in the Haskell area. As a child, Simmons repaired fences and worked cattle. At age 10, he told his father, "I want to be an oil man."

Booker T. Washington, on one of his trips to Oklahoma, spent the night at the Simmons ranch and convinced Simmons to attend the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. From Washington, Simmons learned to love work for its own sake, and learned that success depends on an ability to charm and motivate people.

After graduating from Tuskegee in 1919, Simmons married Melba Dorsey and moved to Detroit, Michigan. A year later he divorced her, moved back to Oklahoma, and married Willie Eva Flowers.

Oil business

As a member of the Creek Nation, Simmons received convert|160|acre|km2 when the tribe disbanded. In the 1920s, oil flowed on his hand. He became an oil broker and entrepreneur, buying and selling oil leases, and started a real estate business. During the Great Depression, he sold Oklahoma farmland to African Americans in East Texas, who had made money in the oil boom. Meanwhile he expanded his oil lease-trading business into Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Kansas. He dealt with oil barons such as William Skelly, founder of Skelly Oil, and Frank Phillips, founder of Phillips Petroleum.

With the help of his sons and L. W. Thomas of Summit, Oklahoma, Simmons built the Simmons Royalty Co., and expanded into cattle and insurance. [The indicated that L.W. Thomas of Summit, Oklahoma was president of the Simmons Royalty Company.]

In the 1960s, Simmons worked as an intermediary in multi-million dollar deals between major American oil companies and newly independent African nations. He became internationally recognized in the oil business. In 1969, he was appointed to the National Petroleum Council.

Civil rights

Simmons refused to be a victim of bigotry. He told his children, “You are equal to anyone, but if you think you’re not, you’re not.”cite web
author = Carol L. Cook
title = ... Role Models for Potential Black Businessmen
publisher = Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute
url = http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1991/3/91.03.04.x.html
date =
accessdate = 2008-02-07 ]

Simmons thought that jobs were the key to economic empowerment for African Americans. He helped blacks gain skills in his business and then helped them find jobs in other businesses. Simmons once said, "It is a waste of life for a man to fail to achieve when he has the opportunity."

In 1938, Simmons filed one of the early court cases against separate schools and took it all the way to the Supreme Court. He was president of the Oklahoma NAACP and presided over the Negro Business League.

Family

Simmons' son J. J. "Jake" III was vice president of the family business before being recruited to work at the Interior Department during the Kennedy administration. He served as undersecretary of the Interior Department during the first Reagan administration and a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission in the 1980s and 1990s. [cite web
author =
title = Joseph Simmons Dies; Interior Undersecretary
publisher = The Washington Post
url = http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-232301.html
date = January 2, 2003
accessdate = 2008-02-07 ] Donald, an economist, took over Simmons Royalty Company. Blanche was a social worker and Kenneth, a Harvard-educated professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.

References

External links

* [http://www.amazon.com/Staking-Claim-Simmons-African-American-Dynasty/dp/0689117914 Staking a Claim: Jake Simmons and the Making of an African-American Oil Dynasty] at amazon.com