The Rev. Dr. Gilbert H. Caldwell first met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1958 while he was a student at Boston University. He actively participated in the 1963 March on Washington, the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, and the March in Boston protesting public school segregation, 1968 Poor People’s Campaign.
Dr. Caldwell is a graduate of North Carolina A. & T. State University and Boston University School of Theology. He received an Honorary Doctor of Divinity, D.D. degree, Dakota Wesleyan University, Mitchell, South Dakota.
He is a retired United Methodist Church minister who has pastored churches in Boston, New Haven, Brooklyn, Harlem, Chester, Pennsylvania and Denver, Colorado. Dr. Caldwell has been a United Methodist Church District Superintendent in Boston and West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Dr. Caldwell is a member of the Board of Preachers and Scholars, Martin Luther King Chapel, Morehouse College, Atlanta, and a Distinguished Alum of Boston University School of Theology. For his leadership and work, Dr. Caldwell received Social Justice Awards from the Church Within A Church Movement and the Methodist Federation for Social Action.
Reaching beyond the United States, Dr. Caldwell made six trips to the continent of Africa, the first in 1971 to Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia.
Dr. Caldwell is Married to Grace Dungee Caldwell for 58 years. He has two sons, Dale and Paul, and a granddaughter, Ashley.
During his ministry Dr. Caldwell has written five books, chapters in several books, and numerous articles in magazines and newspapers.
Dr. Caldwell is the producer and subject of the film, “From Selma to Stonewall” which explores the relationship between the Civil Rights and LGBTQ movements.