Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Beatrice Kenner and Midred Smith: Sister Inventors About this episode Beatrice Kenner’s inventions were focused largely on making life easier and less annoying for herself and the people around her, including period products. Mildred Smith’s invention was about family, and it grew from her disability after she developed multiple sclerosis.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:16 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And I'm Holly Frey. Holly, you've been on kind of an inventor kick lately. I have. And I'm joining you now. Welcome, welcome to Inventorland. Today's episode is actually on two sisters, Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner and Mildred Ethel Davidson Austin Smith. Beatrice's inventions were focused largely on making life easier and less annoying for herself and the people around her, including inventions related to something I personally find pretty annoying, which is our periods.
3:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Mildred's invention was more about family and that invention grew from her disability after she developed multiple sclerosis. This is one of those subjects where there are just little bits of misinformation and inaccuracies that have become incredibly widespread and are now kind of taken as fact because different writers have all been sourcing the same work and also sourcing each other. So I've tried to sort out as much of that as possible, but there are definitely still some gaps. Also, there is a photo that is purportedly of Beatrice as a young woman that is just all over the place, including, as of when we recorded this, things like the Wikipedia article about her.
3:50 Tracy V. Wilson? I'm 99% sure that photo is really of Mildred. There's not really as much recent writing about Mildred, but the photo that is sometime used for her is, again, I'm like 99% sure that's really of Beatrice. And the reason that I think this is that there are also some publicly available photos of each of them from later on in their lives, like one of Beatrice that was included alongside an obituary and one of Mildred that was in a 1982 article about her. That photo of the older Mildred looks more like the photo that's usually used on articles about Beatrice. And then the photo of older Beatrice looks more like the one that is sometimes used for Mildred.
4:34 Tracy V. Wilson? I also found a photo in newspaper coverage of Mildred's career as a singer in the 30s that very strongly resembles that photo that's usually used for Beatrice today.
4:46 Tracy V. Wilson? That's just a thing to be aware of if you go Google these women and see the photos that are being used.
4:53 Holly Frey? I will talk about the odd giggle this whole thing gave me in behind the scenes on Friday.
4:57 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
4:58 Holly Frey? Mildred and Beatrice came from a family of inventors. Their maternal grandfather, Robert Pink Fronbarger, worked for a railroad company. In 1915, he and William Floyd Byram were issued US Patent 1134871 for a current supply system for electrical railways. According to interviews that Beatrice and Mildred gave later on in their lives, their grandfather also invented a tri-color signaling system for trains, but he didn't get the patent on that one. Fronbarger was black, and he demonstrated his invention to some white railroad men before he had applied for a patent on it. They stole that design from him, and because of the entrenched systems of racism that
5:43 Holly Frey? he was living and working in, there really wasn't anything he could do about it.
5:48 Tracy V. Wilson? Mildred and Beatrice's father, Sidney Nathaniel Davidson, was a Baptist minister, and several of his brothers were ministers as well. Sidney had a clothes pressing business and also owned a funeral home, and he invented things that were related to both of those professions. In 1914, he was awarded a patent on a clothes presser that could fit in a person's luggage, as described in US Patent 1088329. "The object of this invention resides in the provision of a trousers creasing device, wherein trousers may be disposed in a flattened position to be pressed and creased."
6:30 Tracy V. Wilson? This device had multiple hinged leaves with rounded ends, so that the parts of the pants that were supposed to be creased stayed creased, but the presser did not make unwanted creases where the legs of the pants needed to be folded to fit in the luggage.
6:47 Holly Frey? Beatrice and Mildred later gave interviews in which they talked about what happened with this invention. Apparently, a company in New York was interested in bringing it to market, but possibly influenced by his father-in-law's experience, Sidney tried to put it into production himself with the help of one of his brothers. According to Beatrice, he and a brother only managed to make one presser, which they sold for $14. According to Mildred, Sidney wanted to develop it with his brothers, but he couldn't get their interest, and ultimately, he sold the rights to the design for much less than she thought it was worth.
7:25 Tracy V. Wilson? Later on, Sidney Davidson was also issued US Patent 2607103 on what he called "a body lifter." This was meant for mortuary staff to use to move people's bodies, and it could also serve as a mortuary table. It was designed to be easy to slip under a person's body, and it could be used like a stretcher to carry living people who, for whatever reason, couldn't be moved with some other type of stretcher. He also designed a long-handled brush that could dispense water that was to be used for washing trains, although I wasn't able to find a patent for that one.
8:03 Holly Frey? Mary Beatrice Davidson was born in Monroe, North Carolina, on May 17, 1912. Her name appears in multiple ways in newspapers and other written documents from her lifetime, sometimes as Mary Beatrice, sometimes M. Beatrice, and sometimes just Beatrice. Later on in her life, people called her Aunt B. Monroe is considered part of the Charlotte metropolitan area today, and Mildred Ethel Davidson was born in Charlotte on January 31, 1916.
8:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Beatrice and Mildred also had two brothers, Perry, who was the oldest, and Leighton, who was born between Beatrice and Mildred. The family lived in a predominantly white part of town, and when the children reached school age, they had to go to private school because there wasn't a public school in the neighborhood that would accept black children.
8:57 Holly Frey? When Beatrice was five and Mildred was an infant, Beatrice was seriously burned. Perry and a cousin had been told that if they raked leaves, Santa Claus would be good to them. And Beatrice thought that if she helped, he might be good to her as well. The boys had raked the leaves into two piles, and she decided to combine them, not realizing that they had just set fire to one of those piles. She grabbed an armful of leaves from that pile, and by the time she realized they were burning, some of them were sticking to her clothing.
9:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Beatrice's burns were mainly around her mouth and chin. And the doctors who came to see her did not expect her to live because of the smoke and flame that she had inhaled. At the time, the only hospital in the Charlotte area that accepted black patients didn't have a lot of experience treating burns. So her mother, Nellie, and her paternal grandmother, who worked as both a midwife and a veterinarian, cared for her around the clock themselves for weeks.
9:58 Holly Frey? Beatrice recovered, but she had scars around her lips and chin, which she was teased and bullied over. Even adults told her that she would never amount to anything because of the scars on her face. This is another reason why it seems like those photos are probably misattributed. There is no suggestion of a scar in the photo that is usually used to represent her. Beatrice described herself as becoming more and more determined to make something of herself every time someone said something like this to her.
10:30 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, the photo that's usually used for Beatrice is like a really pretty clear, straightforward view of her face. And the ones that I think really are of Beatrice are more like low-resolution scans of things that ran in newspapers. And so the photos are not as clear as the one that's typically used for Beatrice that I think is really of her sister. Beatrice also described herself as mechanically minded. The first time she tried to invent something, she was six years old. One of their doors had a squeaky hinge and after somebody oiled it, it would not take very long for it to start squeaking again.
11:12 Tracy V. Wilson? She told her mother that there should be a self-oiling door hinge and she had an idea for how to do this. She worked on that idea until her hands hurt, but she never quite nailed it. Another idea she had as a kid was a convertible roof that could be used to protect the people who were riding on the rumble seat of a car. And she designed a sponge tip for the end of an umbrella so that when you closed the umbrella and left it upside down after you'd used it, the water would collect in that sponge rather than pooling on the floor.
11:44 Holly Frey? I think that's so ingenious. In 1924, when Beatrice was 12 and Mildred was eight, the family moved to Washington, DC. Their mother, Nellie, had a sister who lived there and had fallen in love with the city while visiting. This opened up some new educational opportunities for the children. Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School was the first public high school for Black students in the United States, and it had developed a reputation for academic excellence.
12:13 Tracy V. Wilson? Washington, DC in the 1920s was also a much bigger city than Charlotte, and that brought some other opportunities for the siblings. While their father was an inventor, their mother loved art and music. And in the early 1930s, Perry, Beatrice, and Mildred formed a musical trio. Sometimes it was called Spade Flush and sometimes Perry and his sisters. They started performing publicly and on the radio, and they got some interest to get a music deal. But Mildred was still a minor and she would have needed their father's permission to sign any kind of contract. Sidney would not give that permission because he was concerned about what it would look
12:56 Tracy V. Wilson? like for a minister to allow his children to perform in public. Even though two of the children were effectively adults by that point, he also did not think that the jazz music they were singing was appropriate.
13:10 Holly Frey? While Sidney had owned multiple businesses in Charlotte, after the family moved to Washington DC, he had trouble finding work. According to an interview that Beatrice gave in the 1990s, he left Washington to conduct their oldest brother's funeral, and he didn't come back. But for a while afterward, he did send money from time to time. But that doesn't seem correct. The youngest of the Davidson siblings, Leighton, died in 1926 at the age of 11 after an accidental injury, and he was buried back in Charlotte. But Perry lived until 1956, when his sisters were in their 40s, and his funeral was held in Washington DC. When Sidney died, he was also living in DC.
13:55 Holly Frey? And according to his death notice, he was minister at Washington DC's Guildfield Baptist Church. So it's possible that Beatrice misspoke during this interview, or that the interviewer misunderstood her, or that there's just some other explanation for this confusion.
14:12 Tracy V. Wilson? Beatrice and Mildred both graduated from Dunbar High School. And as they became adults, their lives started to diverge a little bit. And we will take a quick sponsor break. And after we get back, we will focus more on Beatrice for a little bit.
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16:37 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, not to hype them more,
17:22 Holly Frey? but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
17:40 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesay have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends,
18:24 Tracy V. Wilson? proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
18:45 Tracy V. Wilson? We said earlier that Beatrice Davidson started thinking of inventions when she was still a child. After the family moved to Washington DC, she started visiting the US Patent and Trademark Office and learning how that process worked and researching whether other people had already patented any of her ideas. She also volunteered at a hospital and she wanted to train to become a nurse. She said that she planned to go to the Tuskegee Institute and that her father had said that he would pay for her to go, but that money never materialized. It is very possible that this was just because of what was going on in the world when Beatrice would have been ready to go to nursing school.
19:29 Tracy V. Wilson? She graduated from Dunbar in 1931, so that was during the Great Depression.
19:34 Holly Frey? Beatrice kept trying to invent things and she took on various jobs to try to earn enough money to cover the cost of patenting them. She also liked to cook and play the piano and she really liked to go out and see plays and other performances. Eventually, she got a job with the federal government. Various sources say she started at the Census Bureau in 1941 and later moved on to the General Accounting Office, now known as the Government Accountability Office. This is the independent, nonpartisan agency sometimes known as the investigative arm of Congress, which has existed to do things like audit government agencies, investigate allegations of fraud and waste, and provide reports on government efficiency since 1921.
20:19 Holly Frey? For more than 100 years, the GAO has done this through actual accounting, audit, and investigatory procedures, not by feeding things into a large language model and using its output to decide what to cut and who to fire.
20:33 Tracy V. Wilson? Several articles about Beatrice say that during WWII, in addition to volunteering as a nurse with the Red Cross, she worked as a dance chaperone. Although she was unmarried, at this point she would have been in her 30s. A couple of sources say that she met a soldier at one of these dances, fell in love with him, and got married, with that marriage ending in a divorce five years later. I could not find confirmation of this marriage or who it was to, and Beatrice does not mention it in the interviews that I had access to. But her sister Mildred did get married in 1938, and Mildred's husband did serve in WWII, and that marriage did end in divorce. So it is not fully clear to me whether this
21:18 Tracy V. Wilson? is just another point of confusion between the two sisters, or if Beatrice had a marriage in the 40s that she just did not want to talk about later.
21:29 Holly Frey? We do know that Beatrice married James Kenner, known as Jabbo, in 1951. Jabbo was one of the founders of the Black Police Boys Club, a precursor to the Metropolitan Police Boys and Girls Club. He had also been a professional boxer with a promising career, including winning the Middle Atlantic Coast Black Heavyweight Championship. His boxing style is where the name Jabbo came from. But his boxing career had been derailed when he contracted tuberculosis in 1943. That was the same year that the antibiotic streptomycin was first isolated, which was the first really effective treatment for TB. We covered streptomycin's development on the show back in 2013.
22:12 Holly Frey? Jabbo was treated at Glendale Tuberculosis Sanitarium in Glendale, Maryland, and it took years for him to fully recover. After that, he focused on working with youth, including becoming director of the Boys and Girls Club. A 1947 article on him describes him as a hero to the area's youngsters.
22:33 Tracy V. Wilson? As a little snapshot from their married life, Beatrice loved to find four-leaf clovers out in their yard. And there was one patch of grass that she would not let him cut so that she could hunt for clovers there. When she found one, she would make a wish on it, and then she would press it in a book. She and her husband worked together on youth programs, and they eventually became foster parents, and they adopted at least one son from foster care.
22:58 Holly Frey? Beatrice was awarded her first patent in 1956. That was US Patent 2745406, sanitary belt. This is something she had been working on and improving since she was a teenager, and it is her most well-known invention today. So to talk about it, we need to talk a little bit about the history of menstrual protection.
23:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Generally speaking, in the very, very distant past, it's likely that people's menstrual periods were lighter and that people had fewer of them because they were pregnant a lot more often and also didn't have the robust nutrition that most of us, at least here in the US, have today. The first written references to some kind of menstrual protection are pretty recent relative to how long people have been having periods. According to a number of sources, it is the story of Hypatia throwing one of her menstrual rags at a man who would not leave her alone. We talk about that in our episode on her that ran as a Saturday classic on January 20th of 2024.
24:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Hypatia lived around the 4th century, but this story about her throwing her rags at someone, that first appeared in writing around the 10th century. So there's some speculation that hundreds or maybe more like thousands of years ago, people might have just bled into their clothes, especially since in a lot of cultures it was and in some cases still is expected for people to isolate themselves and rest when they were menstruating.
24:32 Holly Frey? At some point, people started using some kind of absorbent material to try to contain the blood during their periods. And historically, there has been a lot of ingenuity and problem solving involved in dealing with menstrual bleeding. The kinds of materials people have used have depended on where they lived and what was available there. So rags, moss, wool, paper, cotton, animal furs or skins, and dried dung wrapped in cloth are among the many options.
25:02 Tracy V. Wilson? A lot of times, writing about this is really focused on how some of these seem like they wouldn't work very well, but like, people were also figuring it out. Were solving problems and discovering solutions. A lot of these are also still in use in various places around the world, and in some cases, homemade, homegrown products work fine. A lot of them are definitely more sustainable than most of today's mass-produced tampons and pads, which can create a lot of plastic waste. But for a lot of people, options like rags, or moss, or animal dung just aren't very comfortable or effective. Combined with stigma around menstruation and a lack of access to reliable menstrual
25:47 Tracy V. Wilson? products and to bathrooms and to clean water, all that together is a source of systemic sex-based disadvantage known as period poverty.
25:57 Tracy V. Wilson? This includes kids in some parts of the world missing school during their periods or dropping out of school entirely after they start menstruating.
26:06 Holly Frey? And that brings us back to Beatrice Kenner's invention. By the 19th century, people in Europe and North America were mostly using some kind of pad made of flannel or woven cloth, often homemade, which was meant to be washed and reused. Then, in the late 19th century, companies started making and selling disposable pads. One of the first was released by Johnson & Johnson in 1887, and it was called Lister's Towels: Sanitary Napkins for Ladies. Joseph Lister did not have anything to do with this. His name was just associated with hygiene. This pad had loops at each end that could be threaded through a belt to hold it in place. Even with the Lister name, though, these did not sell very well,
26:51 Holly Frey? and that's attributed to how much stigma there was about menstruation and people's reluctance to buy something that was obviously for use during their periods.
27:01 Tracy V. Wilson? For decades after this, commercially-made pads followed this same basic model. There was something absorbent that would be attached to a belt with loops, or clips, or buttons, or hooks. That absorbent material improved during World War I alongside wound dressings that were being used on the battlefield. Some sources attribute part of this evolution to nurses using these dressings as pads. A big innovation during this time was cellul cotton, which was a cottony material made from cellulose. So, the shift to disposable, commercially-made pads around the turn of the 20th century was simultaneously driven by the hygiene movement, industrialization, and warfare.
27:48 Holly Frey? While these pads were usually more absorbent than layers of flannel or another cloth, they were still a lot bulkier than most of today's commercial pads. And the belts had a number of issues. Many of them were similarly bulky and just uncomfortable to wear. Some of them were sold by size and they weren't really adjustable so they could become too big or too small if somebody's weight fluctuated during their period, which is absolutely normal in the case for a lot of people. A lot of designs also didn't really work well if someone was moving around a lot. The pad was sort of suspended in the same place all the time, regardless of whether someone was standing or sitting or bending over. So when a person moved and the pad didn't,
28:33 Holly Frey? it might not be in the right place to absorb the blood anymore. And it could also just bunch up uncomfortably under a person's clothing.
28:42 Tracy V. Wilson? Beatrice's invention addressed a lot of these issues. It was, in the words of her patent quote, "extremely simple in construction, easy to use, adjustable for various sized persons, well adapted for its intended purpose, and very inexpensive to manufacture." It was so compact and so inexpensive that it could be included along with the pad in the dispensers in public places. In addition to being adjustable, it included adhesive portions for attaching the pad, and it was designed so that the pad could slide back and forth. So it held the pad snugly against the body, and as the wearer moved around, the pad would slide along the middle part of the belt
29:25 Tracy V. Wilson? and move with them, so it stayed in the right place.
29:29 Holly Frey? According to Beatrice's interviews, there was a company interested in bringing this sanitary belt to market. Various articles say it was the Son Nap Pack Company. That first part is spelled S-O-N-N. But this is probably a misspelling? It's a name that only seems to exist in articles about Beatrice Kenner. On the other hand, San Nap Pack, spelled S-A-N, and later called Do Skin Products, was a real company that made things like facial tissue and cellulose sanitary napkins. In Beatrice's account, someone from the company came to meet with her and was obviously startled when they realized she was black. And at that point, they immediately lost interest.
30:14 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1969, Beatrice was awarded US Patent 2881761 for an improvement on this design. It still featured an adjustable waist belt and attachments that allowed the pad to move around with the wearer. The improvement was the attachment for the pad. This time, it was a moisture-proof pocket to help prevent leaks.
30:37 Holly Frey? Neither of Beatrice Kenner's sanitary belt designs was ever brought to market, and her patents expired in 1973 and 1976. A number of sources kind of make it sound like manufacturers just jumped on her design once her patents had expired, but that's not really the case. By the 1970s, manufacturers were moving away from sanitary belts, thanks to the development of adhesives that could keep a pad attached to a person's underwear without damaging that underwear when the pad was removed. The first adhesive pads were introduced in 1969. And Kenner's first patent did involve an adhesive, but the adhesive itself was not described in that patent.
31:19 Tracy V. Wilson? By the time her patents expired, there were also other modern commercially-made options for menstrual protection, including tampons and menstrual cups. Both of these had already existed in some form before that, but they were introduced as manufactured consumer products in the 1930s. Tampons took a while to catch on because of concerns about safety and hygiene and stigma and misconceptions around the concept of virginity. But by the 70s, tampons were widely available, and they had become a lot more popular. Menstrual cups also didn't really catch on immediately, but they have had a resurgence in more recent years.
32:00 Holly Frey? Beatrice Kenner's next patent has a connection to her sister. So we're going to take another sponsor break and then hop over to Mildred's story for a bit.
32:12 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeart Media's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
32:55 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
33:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
34:01 Tracy V. Wilson? only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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36:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Earlier, we talked about how, while still a teen, Mildred Davidson had started performing as a singer with her siblings. She described singing as being in her blood. After she graduated from Dunbar High School, she wasn't really sure what she wanted to do with her life, and she took a little time trying to figure it out. After she decided to make music her career, she enrolled at Howard University School of Music, which is now part of Howard's Chadwick A. Bozeman College of Fine Arts. She studied there for about two and a half years. And while she was still in college, she also started touring as a singer.
37:04 Holly Frey? As we mentioned earlier, on January 29, 1938, just a couple of days before her 22nd birthday, Mildred got married to Ralph Edward Austin. And they had two sons, Ronald and Ralph Jr. Ralph Sr. was a minister, and he seems to have had similar opinions about Mildred's musical career to the ones that her father Sidney had. Mildred was offered the chance to audition for the role of Carmen in an all-black staging of that opera. But Ralph objected to the idea of her playing that role, basically describing Carmen as having low morals. So Mildred didn't do it, and that was something she expressed regret about later. At some point, Mildred and Ralph divorced.
37:47 Holly Frey? And by the time her father died in 1956, she had married Ray Smith. That marriage eventually ended in divorce as well.
37:56 Tracy V. Wilson? Mildred did keep singing, though. In addition to her solo performances, she performed with the National Negro Opera Company. She also sang in a number of church choirs and eventually became choir director at Tabor Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC.
38:13 Holly Frey? Like her sister, Mildred was a federal employee, also working at the General Accounting Office. She left the GAO in 1961 at the age of 45 because she was experiencing disabling physical symptoms that were affecting her ability to work. And these symptoms also affected her musical career. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1964.
38:37 Tracy V. Wilson? MS is believed to be an autoimmune disease. It involves the body's immune system attacking the myelin sheath that protects the nerve fibers. A person's exact symptoms depend on which nerves are affected. So these symptoms can include things like numbness and tingling, a lack of coordination, blindness and other visual disturbances, dizziness, slurred speech, and mood and cognitive changes. Most people with MS have a type known as relapsing remitting, in which a person experiences cycles of symptom flare-ups, followed by periods of relative remission. And this was the case for Mildred.
39:17 Holly Frey? After her diagnosis, Mildred became a spokesperson for people with MS, holding educational lectures for women's clubs and other groups about the disease. She also worked with the outreach chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which had been established as Advancement of Research on Multiple Sclerosis in 1946. She also did one-on-one outreach to other people with MS and their families.
39:43 Tracy V. Wilson? As Mildred's MS progressed, she started using a walker for mobility. And in 1976, her sister Beatrice was awarded US Patent 3957071, which was, quote, "A carrier attachment, including a rigid tray section and a pocket section, is suspended by connecting straps from one side of the top frame. The tray section can be swung to operative position above and supported by the top frame member." This was both a pocket and a tray. The background section of this patent notes that while walkers provided a stable, supporting structure and valuable mobility assistance to people who use them,
40:25 Tracy V. Wilson? their shape and their structure also limited a person's ability to hold and carry things that they might need. So this device worked with a structural frame design that was really commonly used among most of the walkers of the era. And it provided both a way to carry things and a flat surface to put things on when needed.
40:47 Holly Frey? By this point in Beatrice's life, she and Jabbo had moved to McLean, Virginia. Beatrice had left her job with the federal government after a series of experiences in which white people with less experience were promoted over her. She had opened her own flower shop, eventually operating five of them in and around the Washington DC area. This is something else that the sisters had in common. Mildred had also run her own flower shop and later in life ran the flower shop for her church, Shiloh Baptist Church, which named her its Woman of the Year in 1981.
41:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Mildred started developing her invention around the same time that Beatrice was patenting that walker carrier attachment. During a particularly bad MS flair, Mildred wasn't able to leave her bed. And she said that during that time, she thought a lot about her family and how good they had been to her. And also what a big family it was and how hard it could be to keep up with how everyone was related to everyone else. This became the inspiration for a board game called Family Traditions.
41:53 Holly Frey? Family Traditions involved a set of playing cards, each of them labeled and illustrated with a family member or a family relationship. Cards were shuffled and dealt to the players who used sets of three cards to fill in family relationships on a game board, such as "my mother's son is my brother," but also more distant relationships like third and fourth cousins. Players got points for each relationship they created on the board, with different family members and relationships earning different numbers of points. But they lost points for any cards left over in their hand at the end of the game. Mildred was awarded US Patent 4230321 on this game in October of 1980.
42:36 Holly Frey? And she also trademarked the name and logo and registered the copyright on the game rules.
42:42 Tracy V. Wilson? Mildred borrowed some money from Beatrice so that she could publish this game herself, selling out of the first printing of 100 copies. She followed this with another run of 500 more copies of the game. She also created a Braille edition, and in 1982, she told a reporter that her dream was for her game to become as big as Monopoly and allow her to start a company of her own that she would staff with other disabled people.
43:10 Holly Frey? On October 19th of 1982, Beatrice was awarded US Patent 4354643 Bathroom Tissue Holder. This was a device that could attach to a person's existing toilet paper holder on the wall, which would always keep the free end of the toilet paper available, so you didn't have to spin the roll around hunting for it. This looked a little like a short ladder with hooks at one end, which could attach to the rod on the holder. The free end of the toilet paper would then be threaded through the bottom two rungs of the ladder.
43:42 Tracy V. Wilson? On December 13th, 1983, Beatrice's husband Jabbo died. After retiring as director of the Boys and Girls Club, he had continued to volunteer with young people in Washington DC and in the other places where he and Beatrice lived. There are still youth leagues and facilities in the area named after him today.
44:04 Holly Frey? In 1984, Beatrice became ill and she needed an ambulance. She was living in the Kings Hill area of Williamsburg, Virginia, where she and Jabbo had moved a few years before his death. She was ultimately fine, but it took a while for the ambulance to get to her because of traffic congestion around the nearby Busch Gardens theme park. And this prompted her to write a letter to the Newport News Daily Press proposing a solution: "That an emergency lane be built in the grassy median area of Route 60, which ran past Busch Gardens." She wrote that this would allow emergency vehicles to respond faster and also prevent lawsuits against the county in the amusement park if people died or lost their homes to a fire because emergency vehicles couldn't get through.
44:50 Holly Frey? She ended her letter to the editor, "I am aware that this has been recognized as a problem area. However, recognition solves no problems and saves no lives."
45:01 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1987, Beatrice was issued another patent, number 4696068 Shower Wall and Bathtub Mounted Back Washer. This is a pad of foam covered in terry cloth mounted to a rigid plate that could be stuck to the shower wall with suction cups. It had a pouch for a bar of soap, quote, "so that a person taking a shower or bath can position their back or any other inaccessible area of their body against the surface of the terry cloth or other fabric cover. And by moving the body area engaged with the cover, provide a washing or massaging function on the surface area of the body." The fabric elements of this invention were all removable so that they could be laundered.
45:46 Holly Frey? It's not documented anywhere whether the back washer and the toilet paper holder came about because Beatrice was trying to make Mildred's home more accessible, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility. Sometime after this last patent was awarded, Beatrice also finished writing an autobiography, which she titled "It Burned My Body But Not My Soul." And to Tracy's knowledge and mine, this was never published.
46:11 Tracy V. Wilson? Mildred E. Smith died at her Washington DC home on January 30th, 1993, at the age of 77.
46:19 Holly Frey? Beatrice kept inventing things for the rest of her life, although she didn't patent any of them. In her 80s, she worked on a protective device for seat belts that she called "nickless" to keep the belt from biting into a person's neck. She said she really needed this because she was so short. Shout out, I agree with her because I have the same problem. Some of the inventions she talked about in the last couple of decades of her life sound a bit more fanciful than the practical ones that she was issued patents on, like a portable car garage and a passenger airplane design that would eject debris away from the passengers in the event of a crash.
46:56 Tracy V. Wilson? Beatrice Kenner died on January 13th, 2006, at Sibley Hospital in Washington DC at the age of 93.
47:06 Holly Frey? Various sources say Beatrice Kenner was awarded more patents than any other black woman in US history, but that's almost impossible to substantiate since patent applications don't include a disclosure of a person's race. In some ways, this leveled the playing field for black inventors who could file patent applications themselves or with the help of attorneys at a time when racism would have kept them from accessing other institutions. At the same time, the patent process was still influenced by the same systemic patterns of discrimination as everything else in the United States. Patenting and invention still cost money, and so did defending a patent in court. And
47:47 Holly Frey? there's been racial bias in the courtroom for the entire history of the United States. It is clear, though, that Mildred and Beatrice were both creative, innovative women who both were very savvy about protecting their inventions through patents, trademarks, and copyright.
48:03 Tracy V. Wilson? I kind of love both of them.
48:05 Holly Frey? Yeah, they're pretty great.
48:08 Tracy V. Wilson? I kept just stumbling onto new things that I was like, oh, that's delightful. I also have listener mail about something else delightful, which is pens. Oh, pens, we love you. Yeah, this came from Trish. Trish wrote, "I love listening to your show, especially the episodes about people and topics that I would never look into myself. My favorite shows are the ones that dig into topics that are often considered boring and make them interesting. You do that very well and make my days much more interesting. I've developed a habit of spouting random bits of trivia in conversations, though. I was so happy when this week's topic was pens, even if the focus was ballpoint pens. I decided to
48:48 Tracy V. Wilson? start journaling in December of 2019. This turned out to be a good idea. I started going through so many pens, gel pens mostly, that I felt guilty about the plastic waste. When I searched for something more environmentally friendly, I fell down the rabbit hole of fountain pen collection culture. You can spend a lot of money on one pen."
49:11 Tracy V. Wilson? Luckily for me, you can also get some decent ones for less than $25. I grew up down the road from one of the main cross pen factories in Rhode Island, and my dad carried one of their fountain pens every day for as long as I can remember. When he retired a little early in 2020, he gave me that pen. Every time I use it, which is pretty much every day, I think of him. A good fountain pen can last for generations. As a tip, if you don't live near one of the few places that still specialize in fountain pens and have trouble with the nib, a jeweler can often help fix it. Pun intended, not sorry. Thank you again for finding and sharing all the interesting things behind everyday topics. As a pet tax, here is my dog Penny, who seems to have melted in the heat, and my feisty
49:56 Tracy V. Wilson? but dumped turtle Gulliver, who sometimes tries to get off her rock in the wrong direction and needs to be rescued, Trish. Thank you so much, Trish, for this email and for these pictures. We have a picture of a turtle. This turtle appears to be sideways.
50:18 Tracy V. Wilson? Not, not quite the direction that the turtle should be oriented. And also, yes, a puppy dog doing the thing where they stretch out with as much of them as possible touching the floor where it's cool. The sploot. Yep. Thank you so much, Trish, for this email. Maybe I'll give fountain pens another go someday and see if I can find one with a nib that does not feel unpleasant to me to write with, because that was my big stumbling block. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we're at [email protected] .
50:59 Tracy V. Wilson? And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts.
51:11 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
51:25 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
51:56 Tracy V. Wilson? You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.
52:32 Speaker 05 Livright, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
52:59 Tracy V. Wilson? Long hours, work deadlines, family commitments. You give so much to everyone else. Isn't it time to invest in yourself? The University of Arizona Global Campus is built for working adults with flexible online degree programs designed to fit your life. Your previous education, training, and eligible experience may even help you earn college credit. At UAGC, you can take one accelerated course at a time, helping you move toward your goals in five- and six-week class formats. Visit uagc.edu today. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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