Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner, born in 1912, developed a revolutionary sanitary belt with a moisture-proof pocket in the 1920s to give women more control over menstruation. Despite her family's inventive background and her own early aptitude, financial constraints and later racial discrimination hindered her success. Her patent was finally approved in 1956, but a manufacturing deal collapsed upon the company discovering she was Black, preventing her invention from being widely recognized during her lifetime.