He was just twenty-five years old when he became the minister at
Scott, and it did not take long for Mallie Robinson to ask him to reach out to her son. Downs did not need a lot of encouraging, though,
because his plans for the struggling church included a revived youth ministry that would richly benefit from Mallie’s well-respected son.
Intrigued, Jackie Robinson showed up at junior church shortly after
the awkward encounter at the street corner. Much to his delight, he
discovered a young minister intent on tapping young people as the
“to seek to HelP otHers”
29
key resource for reviving the church. “The new minister immediately
captured the imagination of the younger people because he himself was a young man,” Robinson recalled.4
But it was not just his youth that Robinson found refreshing. “Of
course, all of us know that just being young doesn’t mean you are a progressive person,” Robinson said. “I can testify that I have met some pretty narrow-minded young fogies. Karl Downs was just the opposite of that.”5
Downs’s progressivism faced a severe challenge a month or so after
he arrived at Scott Church, when he traveled to Chicago for a conference on the future of faith and service, hosted by the United Methodist Council. The council’s executive committee had asked Downs to
represent Methodist youth before the four thousand attendees and to
focus his speech on youth issues, not racial ones.
The committee had also instructed Downs to register at the Ste-
vens Hotel, the location of the conference’s headquarters. Although a friend had informed him that the hotel was for whites only, Downs was unable to square that troubling information with his knowledge that
the Methodist Church had expressly prohibited meetings at places that practiced racial discrimination and segregation. So Downs and a white friend, Hayes Beall, reserved a room together at the hotel.
It was not intended to be a provocative act.
Beall arrived at the conference first, and the hotel clerk politely completed his reservation and granted him access to the room. But a different experience awaited Downs.
“When I called for my reservation by name and the number of my
room, pandemonium broke out,” he recalled.6
The Stevens Hotel was indeed for whites only, and the hotel staff,
acting in accord with standard practices at the hotel, made numerous excuses about why it was impossible for them to give Downs his room.
They could not state that race was the reason; that would expose them to a lawsuit. Nor could they claim the reserved room was otherwise
occupied; Downs’s white roommate had already secured the room for
the two of them.
Excuses of different sorts kept coming, and Downs and his friends
protested. “Each excuse was discounted upon legal and logical grounds, and the office was now in a delirium as to how they could get rid of me,” he recounted.
But the hotel was expertly cunning. While the clerks dodged and
delayed, maids and other workers changed the reserved room from one
with twin beds to one with a double bed. With the change in place,
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JACKIE ROBINSON
the clerks announced: “Well, two persons cannot sleep in the same bed here unless they are married.”
To make matters worse, a church leader arrived at the scene and
criticized Downs in front of the hotel staff for trying to start something.
“This hotel has been very nice to us,” he declared. “They have given us what we wanted. We are satisfied, and you have no right to do this.”
Downs was stung. “The prejudice of the hotel was not to be com-
pared with the agony of the blow my own church leader had given me,”
he later stated. “Bowed in disgust and shame and seething with the
human accompaniment of mental anguish, I retired from my friends as
embarrassed as they were.”
Downs lost the battle, left the hotel, and stewed about his next steps.
First he had to get control of his emotions. As he put it, “I had to fight back with all the ‘strength of Calvary’ the deep passion of hatred and despair which involuntarily boiled within me.”
Next he had to figure out what to do at the conference. Should
he walk out in protest? Should he recount the incident in his speech, lambasting church leaders who knowingly selected a hotel that would
refuse to accommodate three hundred black delegates? Should he say
nothing?
As he deliberated, Downs recounted a promise he had made to him-
self long before the conference: he would never allow racists or racial prejudice to defeat him.
But how should he fulfill that promise in this particular situation?
While he could easily lash out in his speech, he did not want to spoil the spirit of the conference for everyone else. Plus, even though his friends were pleading with him to share the incident publicly, he told them he had no inclination to play the role of a victimized minority.
Downs also felt a keen obligation to fulfill the terms of his contract, to speak as a young Methodist, not as a black Methodist.
So the Rev. Karl Downs, the voice of young Methodism, delivered
his speech without making any reference to the racism he had experi-
enced the day before. The speech, “What We Expect of Our Church,”
earned him a standing ovation.
But Downs was no quietist. He took to the pen and wrote an article
for Zion’s Herald, a Boston Methodist weekly favored by progressive Methodists across the nation.
Downs said he had slept only two hours before his speech at the
conference. “It was not the delivery of the speech that troubled me,” he
“to seek to HelP otHers”
31
said, “but the fact that my church had led me into the agony of soul-piercing embarrassment due to the color of my skin.”
The embarrassment was not warranted, according to Downs,
because God had directly willed him to be a black man. As Downs
put this, “No official information reached me stating that I, one of the conference speakers, whom God had willed to make a Negro, could not
sleep in the hotel in Chicago.”
Downs then recounted the details of the incident before faulting the church for being “timorous” in the face of racial injustice.
In its published reply to Downs, the editors of Zion’s Herald
applauded the young minister for suppressing his anger at the conference and focusing on the job at hand. “You were invited to speak in
Chicago because the church recognized your ability, loved you,” wrote the editors. “Its faith in you was justified—you ‘made good.’ ”7
Time magazine and other national publications picked up the story, and not everyone was impressed with Downs’s actions. William Jones,
the managing editor of the Baltimore Afro-American, wrote: “It might have been more effective if the Rev. Mr. Downs had exploded, hurled
the sting of religious hypocrisy into the teeth of the rest of the Christians who stood by and saw the preachment of the brotherhood and
decency of human relations desecrated.”8
Back in Pasadena, Downs probably shared the story with his congre-
gation, emphasizing the importance of sometimes bearing one’s cross
in the short term in order to make an effective witness to justice in the long run. It was a strategic lesson of sacrifice and courage that would not be lost on Jackie Robinson, by now a strong supporter of the young minister.
Settling into parish ministry, Downs focused his renewed atten-
tion on attracting young people to the church, making
sure to address not only their spiritual needs but also their social ones. “He started a campaign to interest the kids in the church,” Robinson recalled. “He set up recreational activities within the church right on the premises; activities which brought us off the streets. Suddenly we found ourselves having dances at the church, playing on a new badminton court which was installed.”9 Scott Church also soon had a skating rink and a basketball court.
Downs’s progressive ministry also sought to address the wider needs
of the community. In an age when churches often ignored community
needs, Downs steered his church to set up a day care, a social service ministry, and a library that loaned books and toys.
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JACKIE ROBINSON
Downs also hosted interracial teas and staged a celebrity night that attracted black and white leaders known throughout the United States, like Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of Harlem, and even the global community, like scientist Linus Pauling.
During his first year at Scott, Downs also increased his involve-
ment with the NAACP. In June 1938 he married Marion Jackson, the
daughter of Keiffer and Lillie Jackson of Baltimore, one of the most active and prominent families in the NAACP. A civil rights activist
with a fierce reputation, Lillie Jackson was president of the Baltimore NAACP and worked closely with the branch’s young lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, on a landmark case attacking unequal pay for black
teachers in Maryland.
Five months after his wedding, Downs spoke at the annual meeting
of the NAACP, and in a preview to his speech, the Baltimore Afro-American, once critical of him, reported that since the incident in Chicago, “the Rev. Mr. Downs has been hailed as the most promising
and potent young minister today.” Downs delivered a speech titled
“Wanted, Revolutionists.”10
Downs’s activism was deeply attractive to Robinson, and he began
spending much more time at Scott Church. The young minister
enlisted him to teach Sunday school, and Robinson continued in that
role even when attending Pasadena Junior College and then UCLA.
“There were so many Saturdays after a football game that my body was so sore and aching that I didn’t believe I’d be able to get out of bed on Sunday morning and go to church and teach my class,” he said. “But
you didn’t let Karl down and I always made it.”11
This experience gave Robinson a sense of purpose and transformed
him into a mentor.
He began to form a special bond with Downs. “He was more than a
pastor to me,” Robinson later claimed. “He was my very close friend.”
The two grew so close that he began to call Downs by his first name, not a common practice among parishioners and pastors at this point.
Robinson respected not only Downs’s activism but also his competi-
tive character. “He had strong, vigorous ideas and the will to win,” he said, expressing pleasure that Downs’s competitive streak motivated him to outwit older Scott members who wanted their church to remain the same.
Robinson also appreciated Downs’s approachability:
I recall so many times when Rev. Downs and I went to the golf links
together.
“to seek to HelP otHers”
33
“Jack,” he would say, “You know I can’t beat you—but I’ve got
to ‘bound’ you.”
So we’d “bound” our dime—or something small like that. I
didn’t really have any money, and neither did he. But I’ve never
had so much fun on a golf course—and I’ve been on plenty of them
since then—as I did with my minister.
He never forgot he was a minister—not even when we were
deeply engaged in golf, badminton or church dances. He was always
finding a way to apply something that happened to the Bible or
the Golden Rule. You had to respect him and you had to listen
intently to everything he said. You see, he wasn’t speaking from the outside, not viewing you from a holy distance. He was right in there with you, competing, beating you, getting beat—and proving all
the while that the Christian life doesn’t have to be dull or colorless.
You could have fun and be a good person too. You didn’t have to
disappear behind some dark and dreary casement in order to be a
worthwhile individual.
By his own account, Robinson felt free in Downs’s presence, free to
be himself and share his deepest thoughts. “Often when I was deeply
concerned about personal crises, I went to him,” Robinson said. “We
had a lot of long talks which affected me deeply.”
In one of those talks, Robinson expressed frustration with having
to watch his mother work so hard for so little material reward while he attended college, largely unable to help alleviate her financial difficulties. “When I talked with Karl about this and other problems, he helped ease some of my tensions,” he stated. “It wasn’t so much what he did to help as the fact that he was interested and concerned enough to offer the best advice he could.”12
Downs’s effect on Robinson was spiritually significant. Arnold
Rampersad, in his 1997 biography of Robinson, describes how Downs
served as a father figure and became the channel through which religious faith “finally flowed into Jack’s consciousness and was finally accepted there, if on revised terms, as he himself reached manhood. Faith in God then began to register in him as both a mysterious force, beyond his comprehension, and a pragmatic way to negotiate the world.”13
But faith also began to register in Robinson as a social force capable of making one’s local community, and the wider world, a better place.
By protesting indentured servitude and then leaving Georgia, Mallie
Robinson had taught her son the importance of struggling for one’s
God-given freedom. Downs supported that important lesson by
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JACKIE ROBINSON
showing Robinson that religion can be a resource for advancing justice for the downtrodden.
With Downs leading the way, Robinson now understood that faith
was not only about praying; it was also about struggling daily to overcome social injustices and free the oppressed wherever they might be.
Robinson drew several more important life lessons from his time
with Downs, and later in life he recounted them in detail.
By deed as well as word, with friendship and companionship, Karl
taught me to work for several things:
To be able to recognize God as the vital force in life.
To develop one’s own self to the best of one’s own ability.
Not only to stay out of evil—but to try to get into good.
To seek to help others without thinking so much of what we will
get out of it, but what we are putting into it.14
Downs shared one more important lesson with his younger friend:
that his dark skin was a gift from God. Downs strongly reinforced Mallie’s lesson about racial pride, often teaching his congregation that “to be born black is more than to be persecuted; it is to be privileged.”15
God had deliberately created individuals to be black, and this act of divine creation was to be honored and celebrated.
Robinson carried that lesson with him the rest of his life. Perhaps
it helped fuel his temper in September 1939, just before he was to
enter UCLA, when a white man pulled up next to Robinson’s car and
referred to him and his friends as “niggers.”
Ray Bartlett, who was riding on a running board of Robinson’s car,
leaned over and struck the man in the face with his baseball glove. As the m
an sped off, Robinson followed him to a stop and jumped out of
the car, prepared to fight. But when a crowd of black youths began to form, the white man suddenly declared he was not interested in starting something and then drove off.
This did not end the situation.
A white police officer, John C. Hall, appeared on the scene and
began trying to make arrests.
Robinson’s friends slipped into the crowd when they saw the officer, but Robinson held his ground, refusing to skulk away.
Officer Hall pulled his gun. “I found myself up against the side of
my car, with a gun barrel pressed unsteadily into the pit of my stomach,” Robinson recalled. “I was scared to death.”16
“to seek to HelP otHers”
35
Robinson spent the night in jail, charged with resisting arrest and
blocking traffic, and the officers on duty did not allow him to make any telephone calls. Help eventually came in the form of UCLA officials
who arranged for Robinson to plead guilty in absentia, paid his fine for being absent, and secured a suspended sentence.
“I got out of that trouble because I was an athlete,” Robinson
recalled.17
Of course, he had also gotten into it because he was a proud, young
black man who would not back down in the face of a racist jeer. That was characteristically Jackie Robinson, and when he strolled through the UCLA campus, it was clear to all who saw him that he was emi-nently comfortable in his skin.
With ongoing encouragement from his mentor Karl Downs, Robin-
son became the first four-letter man at UCLA, competing in football, basketball, baseball, and track. Along the way, the strikingly handsome athlete also caught the attention of many young women on campus,
and in his senior year those admirers included first-year student Rachel Anetta Isum.
Isum, just seventeen years old, commuted to campus in an old Ford
V-8 from her family home on 36th Place, a white-framed cottage in a
racially integrated neighborhood. Growing up, she had experienced racial discrimination at the local movie theater and hamburger joint, but for the most part she had felt safe and comfortable in her surroundings, and especially in her church, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
“The church was central to our social activities,” she recalled. Isum attended Sunday school, sang in the choir, and enjoyed more than a few church dinners. Bethel was her home away from home. “It wasn’t something where you needed to have money or any social resources,” she
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