It reflects the systematic way in which the American economic system has historically prevented Black Americans from converting their labor, creativity, and intellectual work into wealth at the same rate as their white counterparts.

In Mary Kenner’s era, the mid-twentieth century, this pattern operated in specific ways.

The post-World War II economic boom created extraordinary wealth for many Americans, particularly through homeownership, business development, and investment in the stock market.

But the mechanisms that generated this wealth — FHA loans, GI Bill benefits, access to labor union membership and the wages it guaranteed, access to the suburban neighborhoods where property values rose rapidly — were explicitly or effectively closed to Black Americans through a combination of discriminatory federal policy, private discrimination in lending and real estate, and the racial covenants that restricted homeownership in many neighborhoods.

A Black inventor operating in this environment was not simply an inventor facing the normal challenges of bringing an invention to market.