User:Adjoajo/joan

Dr. Joan Bacchus Maynard was born in Brooklyn, New York. She was an artist, author, community organizer, and preservationists. She was one of the founding members of a late 1960s grassroots preservation group to preserve the legacy of a pre-Civil War African American community in Brooklyn. The community was called Weeksville and the settlement began in the 1830s. The community lasted for nearly a century. Members of the founding grassroots preservation group were James Hurley, Dewey Harley, Dolores McCullough, Joan Maynard, and Patricia Johnson. Joan later became the director of the Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford Stuyvesant. It later became Weeksville Heritage Center. She was involved in the preservation of Weeksville, Brooklyn for over 25 years to restore the legacy which was missing from maps of the area. Weeksville was a community of escaped slaves and free blacks. The free blacks owned property which made black males eligible to vote.

Early Life
Joan was born Joan Cooper in Brooklyn, New York. She attended Bishop McDonnel Memorial High School. Her father was John W. Cooper, a ventriloquist. Her mother was from Grenada the Caribbean island. She received a scholarship to attend the Art Career School in Manhattan, New York. She was a Revson Fellow at Columbia University.

Career
Joan was a cover artist for the Crisis magazine, and an art director for McGraw Hill. W.E.B. Du Bois was the founding editor of the Crisis magazine. It was the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Bank Street College of Education.

In 1966 - Maynard was a writer and artist for the Golden Legacy comic series started by Bertram A. Fitzgerald. Joan was previously known as Joan Bacchus while working with the Golden Legacy comic series she worked Tom Feelings on the Volume the Saga of Harriet Tubman volume. Joan and Tom Feelings did the art work for the Harriet Tubman volume 2 series comic series. Joan wrote and pencilled Golden Legacy comic issues about Harriet Tubman, Matthew Henson, and Joseph Cinque & La Amistad mutiny.

Maynard and Gwen Cottman co-authored and published, Weeksville, Then & Now: The Search to Discover, the Effort to Preserve, Memories of Self in Brooklyn, New York.

In October of 2017, City Council member for Brooklyn, Robert Cornegy, and Weeksville trustees a block of Buffalo Avenue co-named to honor the legacy of Maynard.

Quotes
"The process of socialization cannot happen without the telling of history".

"Everyplace has a Weeksville, where ordinary people came first and labored to create a more hospitable living setting for their loved ones. The rediscovery and preservation of this local history provides a means of reestablishing a continuity with the past so that children, armed with the knowledge of the contributions of their forebears can gain strength to meet the challenge of the future".

— Joan Maynard, First Executive Director of Weeksville Heritage Center

Awards

 * Maynard received a Louise DuPont Crowninshield Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation


 * Maynard was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Bank Street College of Education.

Reference
Category:People from Brooklyn Category:African-American women Category:1928 births Category:Education activists Category:Community activists Category:African Americans in New York City Category:Community organizing Category:2006 deaths