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Enola Maxwell

neighborhood activist in San Francisco, California

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 2, 2025
Entity authorityQ105426876 ↗
Source-derived summary

Enola D. "Miz" Maxwell (August 30, 1919 – June 24, 2003) was an American civil rights activist from San Francisco in the United States. She was a community leader, active in the Potrero Hill neighborhood.

Biography

In 1968, Maxwell became the first woman – and first black person – to be named as lay minister at a Presbyterian Church, she served at Olivet Presbyterian Church in the Potrero Hill neighborhood.

Maxwell was later appointed by the church as the executive director of the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House from 1971 until 2003, a role she served until her death at the age of 83. The Potrero Hill Neighborhood House serves the local community with adult education classes, youth and summer school classes, a kindergarten, a meeting hall, and offers theatre performances and dramatics classes.

In 2001, the Potrero Hill Middle School was renamed to the Enola D. Maxwell Middle School of the Arts. The Enola D. Maxwell Middle School of the Arts is located at the same site as a 1950s public housing site that Maxwell had lived in. Her daughter, Sophie Maxwell, was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2000.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Enola Maxwell” as neighborhood activist in San Francisco, California. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1919, 2003, 1968, 1971—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1919-08-30. The account is most persuasive where Enola, Maxwell and neighborhood can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as neighborhood activist in San Francisco, California. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 2, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q105426876. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 2003, 1968 and 1971.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Enola Maxwell”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Enola Maxwell primary sources, Enola Maxwell archive and Enola research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Enola Maxwell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.