He "rose above humble beginnings to become the most successful and most recognizable black entrepreneur in the history of the petroleum industry.
[2] As a member of the Creek Nation, Simmons received 160 acres of land when the tribe disbanded.
During the Great Depression, he sold Oklahoma farmland to African Americans in East Texas, who had made money in the oil boom.
[1][4] In the 1960s, Simmons worked as an intermediary in multimillion-dollar deals between major American oil companies and newly independent African nations.
"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.
Blanche was a social worker and Kenneth, a Harvard-educated professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.