Maynard became friends with influential New York writers James Baldwin and Langston Hughes and later acknowledged Martin Luther King Jr. as a hero.
In 1979, Maynard took over as editor of The Oakland Tribune and became the first African American to own a major metropolitan newspaper after purchasing the paper four years later.
Maynard used the outreach of his newspaper to better the community by pushing for improved schools, trauma care centers, and economic development.
In 1977, Maynard co-founded the Institute for Journalism Education, a nonprofit organization dedicated to training journalists of color and providing accurate representation of minorities in the news media.
The Institute he co-founded with his second wife Nancy Hicks Maynard (1947–2008) was renamed in his honor after his death from prostate cancer in 1993.