Ms. Enola Maxwell was a pioneer for freedom and justice throughout her long career.

The SFPUC has lost a tireless leader and community activist with the passing of Enola Maxwell on June 23, 2003.  Ms. Maxwell served the SFPUC and her beloved neighborhoods of Bayview Hunters Point and Potrero Hill as a member of the Southeast Community Facility Commission.  In recent remarks, Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr., who appointed her to the Commission in 2000, honored Ms. Maxwell as “a pioneering spirit in the city’s African American community, whose passion and activism were complemented by a genuine affection for people and an abiding interest in the good of the city.” 

On July 14, 2003, the SFPUC expressed its “gratitude to Ms. Maxwell for her exemplary service to the Southeast Community Facility and the neighborhood it serves” and honored her for “leaving San Francisco a wonderful legacy of bright, hopeful children, strong families, a united community and a more tolerant city” through a resolution presented to her daughter, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell. 

Children from Bayview Hunters Point participate in art programs.

Growing up in a segregated South, Ms. Maxwell transformed her experience with racism into a lifelong ministry for peace and justice as an activist for civil rights and the celebration of diversity.  As founder and director of the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House, Ms. Maxwell’s vision created a warm, welcoming space for children and families to learn and grow, solve their problems, experience music, theatre and the arts, and participate in the life of their neighborhood. 

In 2001 the San Francisco Board of Education honored Ms. Maxwell’s advocacy for children and youth by dedicating the Enola D. Maxwell Middle School of the Arts on Potrero Hill.   The board resolution named the school in her honor “as a lasting tribute to her tireless efforts in creating a better future for the children of San Francisco and in particular, the Potrero Hill and Bayview Hunters Point communities.”