The first African American woman to do a specific thing is always doing something in a context that had previously excluded or marginalized people like her; the record documents not only the achievement but the exclusion that preceded it.

But records of this type are also complicated by the historical record’s incompleteness.

We know that Mary Kenner was the first African American woman to hold five patents because the patent record is comprehensive and publicly available, and because researchers have examined that record carefully enough to establish the fact.

But the patent record only reflects inventions for which patents were successfully sought and granted.

It does not reflect inventions that were never patented, either because the inventor couldn’t afford the filing fees, or because they didn’t have access to the information about how to file, or because they made the rational decision not to file for a patent that they knew they lacked the resources to enforce.