Earl Caldwell (journalist)

Earl Caldwell (born c. 1935) is an American journalist. He documented the Black Panthers from the inside in the 1970s, and became embroiled in a key U.S. Supreme Court decision clarifying reporters' rights. The case started when the FBI tried to press Caldwell to be an informant against the Black Panther Party. He worked for The New York Times, New York Daily News, The New York Amsterdam News and is currently on the radio in New York City. His career as a journalist spans more than four decades. He witnessed and chronicled some of the most important civil rights events from the 1960s onwards and was the only reporter present when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Caldwell is a founding member of the steering committee of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, as well as the Washington-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In 2009 he was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.