This is the structural context within which the eighteen-year wait becomes comprehensible, though not acceptable.

Mary Kenner had an invention she knew was commercially viable.

She knew it was practically useful and that there was a market for it.

But the gatekeepers who controlled manufacturing and distribution were, overwhelmingly, white men in an era when the commercial relationships between Black inventors and white-controlled industries were shaped by discrimination at every level.

The Inventive Mind at Work

Mary Kenner’s approach to invention was empirical and personal.