Remembering Jackie Robinson and the Methodist Church

Remembering Jackie Robinson and the Methodist Church

I am writing this on Friday, April 12, the day the film "42" about the life of Jackie Robinson is being released. I have discovered in my senior years (79), that memories of the long ago past, are as vivid, sometimes moreso, than are recent events. I have not yet seen the film, but the promotion of it has brought forth these memories.

I first saw Jackie Robinson play in Dallas, Texas, when my father was pastor of St. Paul Methodist Church (1944 - 49). I do not remember the exact year, but I do remember that day when my father and I saw Robinson play. Nor do I remember whether the seating in the stadium was racially segregated. But, I do remember how excited those of us were black were as he began the process of breaking the racial barrier of major league baseball.

My father, Rev. G. Haven Caldwell and our family had come to Dallas in 1944 from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where my father had been pastor of another St. Paul Methodist Church, also in the Central Jurisdiction. But this was not the first time he had been in Texas. He was a Professor at Samuel Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson University) in Austn, Texas, from 1923-25. Most United Methodists are unaware of the fact that Jackie Robinson once was a basketball coach at Samuel Huston College.

As a teen-ager in Pasadena, California, Robinson had become involved in what we would now describe as "gang culture." But, while engaging in the sometimes less-than-positive activities of teenage boys, a young, black Methodist minister, Rev. Karl Downs, got to know Jackie and encouraged him to become involved in the youth activities of the church he pastored. Their relationship continued during Robinson's high school and college years. Rev. Downs performed the marriage ceremony of Jackie Robinson and Rachel Isum and was a friend and counselor to them until Downs' death.

When Karl Downs became the president of Samuel Huston College at the age of 30 he invited Jackie to become Director of Athletics and basketball coach at the College. He was there from 1944-45 and then received an offer to play with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Baseball League. While Robinson was with the Monarchs, Brooklyn Dodgers' manager Branch Rickey, a Methodist layman, recruited him after a stint with their Montreal minor league team.

In his April 12 New York Times review of "42", film critic A. O. Scott writes: "To be accepted as human, as equal to whites, the black pioneers of the era (Robinson) had to rise above all kinds of ordinary human temptations - to fight back, to show anger or fear - and become flawless exemplars of their race."

My hope is that the film about Jackie Robinson, "42" (the number on his uniform), will encourage United Methodists in Texas and elsewhere to remember our Methodist/United Methodist Church racial history. Those of us who are African American remember, that like Jackie Robinson, we knew what it was like to be racial pioneers in our denomination.

"Back in the day" (as some say), there were also white persons who were willing to publicly support racial integration in the Church, who were much like Branch Rickey, the Methodist layman who enabled Jackie Robinson to break Major League Baseball's "color bar." The Methodist/United Methodist Church in its racial journey has been blessed because it has had and has, black, white, brown, Asian and Native American persons who in their racial attitudes and actions, are "exemplars of their race," the human race. Thanks be to God!

The Gilbert H. Caldwell of Asbury Park, NJ, is a retired elder of the Rocky Mountain Conference.