Oral history interview with Joan Maynard

Joan Maynard (1928-2006) was born in Brooklyn, New York on August 29, 1929. She attended Bishop McDonnell Memorial High, Art Career School in Manhattan, and graduated from Empire State College of the State University of New York. She was also a Revson Fellow at Columbia University and received an honorary doctorate from Bank Street College of Education. She worked as a commercial artist and art director for McGraw-Hill, and created comic book treatments of black history, including the Golden Legacy comic series. She also drew covers for The Crisis magazine, the official magazine for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1968, she founded the Society for the preservation of Weeksville and Bedford Stuyvesant, which worked to preserve the legacy of Weeksville, a pre-Civil War African American community in Brooklyn, New York. She secured funding from the New York Landmarks Conservancy, the Downtown Brooklyn Association, and the Mary Flager Carey Trust in order to rehabilitate four wood-frame houses from the mid-1800s, and engaged the local community through public outreach and education, including recruiting students to participate in archaeological digs on the site. Joan Maynard served as President of the Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford Stuyvesant from 1972-1974, and as Executive Director from 1974-1999. She was also a member of Alex Haley's Junta Kinte Oral History Workshop, a founding member of the African American Museum Association, and was Trustee Emeritus of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, receiving their highest honor, the Louise DuPont Crowninshield Award. In 1983, she authored Weeksville, Then & Now: The Search to Discover, the Effort to Preserve, Memories of Self in Brooklyn, New York. She also received a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award from the Brooklyn District Attorney, Charles Hynes. In October of 2017, a block of Buffalo Avenue in Brooklyn was re-named Dr. Joan Maynard Way in her honor.