Shatford related. “Not at all. It’s just that Jack would not take any stuff from them, and they knew it. Frankly, some of them were bigots then. Jack never wanted to be regarded as a second-class citizen. He rebelled at any thought of anybody putting him down, or putting any of his people down. He wanted equality. And he had a temper. Boy, he could heat up pretty fast when he wanted to! Whenhe felt he was right and the other guy was wrong, he didn’t hesitate. He was in there. But he also had an extremely warm side to him that I saw all the time.”
In any event, on January 25, 1938, Jack acquired a police record, as well as a jail term hanging over his head. Before his probationary period was over, he would come before a Pasadena judge again as a defendant.
At almost precisely this time, in a stroke of rare good fortune, Karl Everette Downs entered Jack’s life. Earlier that month, Downs had arrived in Pasadena to assume the pastorship of Scott United Methodist Church on Mary Street, where Mallie worshiped. He was then only twenty-five years old. Robinson and some friends were loitering at a popular street intersection when a tall, razor-thin black man, stylishly dressed in a tailored suit, white shirt, and a tie sharply knotted, stopped his car and called out: “Is Jack Robinson here?” When no one answered, he left a message: “Tell him I want to see him at the junior church.” In their small community, no one had to ask what he meant or guess for long who he was. Sometime later, Jack delivered himself to the church and began a relationship that lasted only a few years but changed the course of his life.
Born in 1912 in Abilene, Texas, the son of a Methodist district superintendent, Downs had attended public schools in Waco, Texas, then earned degrees at black Samuel Huston College in Austin, Texas, and Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, before going on to Boston University. Downs arrived in Pasadena determined to transform Scott United Methodist. In a short time he put in place an amazing number of services and facilities, including a day nursery, a social service department, a toy and book lending library, a skating rink and a basketball court, folk dancing, a young married couples’ fellowship, a Sunday-afternoon radio program, a program of interracial teas, and a celebrity night that brought a variety of speakers to Scott Methodist, from the Harlem activist Adam Clayton Powell Jr. to the Nobel Prize–winning scientist Linus Pauling. Above all, he emphasized the importance of young people and the need for change.
According to Robinson later, “elder members objected to Reverend Downs’s program. They felt tradition should be maintained.” But while the elders objected and debated, Downs quickly won over the youth. “He looked half his age,” Eleanor Heard recalled (he officiated at her marriage), “and yet he was a serious man that you had to respect and admire.” Downs was cosmopolitan but also race proud; he was mature and yet challenged the old ways. Two years before coming to Pasadena, he had published a fighting article, “Timid Negro Students!,” in
Crisis,
the magazine of the NAACP. Calling on black and white students alike to fight social injustice, he demanded “fearless, rational, comprehensive and cooperative venturesof both the Negro and white students.” He warned that injustices like the Scottsboro case and lynchings in the South would continue “until
the Negro student substitutes courage for his timidity and sacrifice for his comforts.
”
To Downs, Robinson evidently was someone special who had to be rescued from himself and the traps of Jim Crow; to Robinson, Downs was a revelation. “He really was a sort of psychiatrist,” Ray Bartlett thought. “I’m not sure what would have happened to Jack if he had never met Reverend Downs.” Downs led Jack back to Christ. Under the minister’s influence, Jack not only returned to church but also saw its true
In any event, on January 25, 1938, Jack acquired a police record, as well as a jail term hanging over his head. Before his probationary period was over, he would come before a Pasadena judge again as a defendant.
At almost precisely this time, in a stroke of rare good fortune, Karl Everette Downs entered Jack’s life. Earlier that month, Downs had arrived in Pasadena to assume the pastorship of Scott United Methodist Church on Mary Street, where Mallie worshiped. He was then only twenty-five years old. Robinson and some friends were loitering at a popular street intersection when a tall, razor-thin black man, stylishly dressed in a tailored suit, white shirt, and a tie sharply knotted, stopped his car and called out: “Is Jack Robinson here?” When no one answered, he left a message: “Tell him I want to see him at the junior church.” In their small community, no one had to ask what he meant or guess for long who he was. Sometime later, Jack delivered himself to the church and began a relationship that lasted only a few years but changed the course of his life.
Born in 1912 in Abilene, Texas, the son of a Methodist district superintendent, Downs had attended public schools in Waco, Texas, then earned degrees at black Samuel Huston College in Austin, Texas, and Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, before going on to Boston University. Downs arrived in Pasadena determined to transform Scott United Methodist. In a short time he put in place an amazing number of services and facilities, including a day nursery, a social service department, a toy and book lending library, a skating rink and a basketball court, folk dancing, a young married couples’ fellowship, a Sunday-afternoon radio program, a program of interracial teas, and a celebrity night that brought a variety of speakers to Scott Methodist, from the Harlem activist Adam Clayton Powell Jr. to the Nobel Prize–winning scientist Linus Pauling. Above all, he emphasized the importance of young people and the need for change.
According to Robinson later, “elder members objected to Reverend Downs’s program. They felt tradition should be maintained.” But while the elders objected and debated, Downs quickly won over the youth. “He looked half his age,” Eleanor Heard recalled (he officiated at her marriage), “and yet he was a serious man that you had to respect and admire.” Downs was cosmopolitan but also race proud; he was mature and yet challenged the old ways. Two years before coming to Pasadena, he had published a fighting article, “Timid Negro Students!,” in
Crisis,
the magazine of the NAACP. Calling on black and white students alike to fight social injustice, he demanded “fearless, rational, comprehensive and cooperative venturesof both the Negro and white students.” He warned that injustices like the Scottsboro case and lynchings in the South would continue “until
the Negro student substitutes courage for his timidity and sacrifice for his comforts.
”
To Downs, Robinson evidently was someone special who had to be rescued from himself and the traps of Jim Crow; to Robinson, Downs was a revelation. “He really was a sort of psychiatrist,” Ray Bartlett thought. “I’m not sure what would have happened to Jack if he had never met Reverend Downs.” Downs led Jack back to Christ. Under the minister’s influence, Jack not only returned to church but also saw its true
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