Just Wanted to Share – May 27, 2026

Wilson Newman, J.C. Pratt, S.M. Holland, and Heston Welborn were African American entrepreneurs who founded the Ardmore Lubrication Oil Company in 1917, in Oklahoma. During the Jim Crow era, they created a largely forgotten, pioneering, fully Black-owned oil operation that included drilling and building a refinery in Tatums, Oklahoma. The Company was capitalized at $50,000 and purchased a 100-acre oil lease in the Healdton oilfield and struck high-grade lubricating oil worth five times the market price. These pioneers sold shares to the Black community for just one-dollar, democratizing oil wealth in an era when African Americans were systematically excluded from such opportunities. By 1920, they announced plans to build their own refinery in Tatums, Oklahoma—creating a fully Black-owned oil operation from drilling to refining.