Wyatt Tee Walker (1953–1959), co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led the congregation in the Civil Rights Movement in Petersburg.
[4] These were the earliest decades of the Baptist Church in Virginia, influenced by preachers from New England who generated revivals.
[7] While it had free blacks taking active roles, the church was led by white pastors in some of its early years.
But, that year they did have to accede to having members of Market Street Church represent them in Portsmouth Association meetings, a situation that lasted until after the American Civil War and emancipation.
Minutes of church and association meetings show they struggled with issues of Christianity within a slave society.
The pressures and narrow edge kept by black congregations can be demonstrated by the fact that Gillfield Baptist dismissed more than one enslaved member for running away.
After the Civil War, in 1865 the congregation called Reverend Henry Williams (1831–1900) as the first black minister of Gillfield Baptist Church since 1831.
Martin Luther King Jr., whom he had met when they were both in divinity school, Walker led efforts in Petersburg to end racial segregation.
Walker was arrested numerous times in the civil rights struggle, the first when he led a group from the church into the "white" public library.
These were years when he helped it develop effective strategy and national prominence in civil rights actions, including the Birmingham campaign and the March on Washington.
[17] His successor, Grady W. Powell, Sr., Gillfield's tenth pastor, led the congregation from 1961 until his retirement at age 65 in 1997, and participated in several Freedom Marches as well.
Powell began his ministry at Gillfield, eggs were thrown at his door, he received threatening phone calls at home at midnight, and a cross was burned in front of the church during a 1963 revival service (for which police soon arrested a suspect).
An active congregation keeps Gillfield Baptist Church at the center of community life in Petersburg.