The Black Oil Company History Deliberately Erased in 1917 In 1917, four Black entrepreneurs—Wilson Newman, J.C. Pratt, S.M. Holland, and Heston Welborn—founded the Ardmore Lubricating Oil Company in Oklahoma during the height of Jim Crow segregation. Operating from the "wrong side" of East 2nd Street in Oklahoma City, they 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 commun