She was an inventor who, in the course of a life that also included running a flower shop and navigating the specific difficulties of being a Black woman in mid-twentieth-century America, found the time and the determination to develop five patented inventions.

She was rejected by the market on grounds that had nothing to do with the quality of her work.

She persisted.

She saw some of her work eventually reach the market.

She lived long enough to receive some of the recognition she deserved.

She is a figure in American history who represents something important about the country: not only the specific barriers that have excluded people from participation in the culture of invention and the rewards of that participation, but also the specific human capacity to invent and persist and endure that has always been present in American life — in all Americans, not only in the ones whose names appear in the textbooks.

The Lesson of Persistence