But recognition is not self-sustaining.

A textbook that includes Mary Kenner’s story is used for some years and then replaced by a new edition that may or may not maintain the inclusion.

A documentary about her can be found by people who search for it but is not in the cultural circulation that brings major works to broad audiences repeatedly over decades.

A school program that teaches her story depends on the specific teacher who decided to include her, and when that teacher leaves or the program changes, the inclusion may disappear.

The figures who are most durably part of the American historical consciousness — George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell — are present not just in textbooks but in monuments, in building names, in the general cultural circulation of references and allusions that reinforce their presence without requiring any active effort.