But structural explanations, while necessary, are not complete.

They explain why the obscurity existed but not why it persisted so long, or why the recovery has been so partial.

The fuller explanation requires acknowledging that the process of recovering overlooked history is itself subject to structural forces.

The institutions that fund recovery — universities, museums, publishers, documentary film companies — have their own histories of inclusion and exclusion, their own assumptions about whose stories deserve the resources needed to recover them, their own commercial calculations about what audiences will pay to see.

The recovery of Mary Kenner’s history has been driven primarily by people who had a specific reason to look for her: Black educators seeking Black role models for their students, feminist historians seeking women’s contributions to science and technology, advocates for a more inclusive historical narrative who were specifically looking for the overlooked.