"Made Good"

For six years the Methodist Church has been on record against patronizing hotels where racial discrimination is practiced. Last February, however, when the United Methodist Council on the Future of Faith & Service met in Chicago's big (3,000-room) Stevens Hotel one of its speakers had trouble. He was the Rev. Karl E. Downs, A. B. (Samuel Houston College), B. D. (Gammon Theological Seminary), M. S. T. (Boston University School of Theology), a 26-year-old Pasadena Negro who had been invited to speak to the conference on behalf of "Methodist Youth." Last week in Zion's Herald, venerable Boston Methodist weekly, he described his experience, his emotions, his triumph:

He and a white co-religionist reserved a room together at the Stevens. The friend arrived and claimed the room. When Mr. Downs asked for his key "pandemonium broke out." Many excuses were offered, but the stock excuse, "all rooms occupied," could not be made. Finally another was found. Maids and hall boys hastily removed the twin beds from the room and replaced them with a double bed, and Mr. Downs was told "two persons cannot sleep in the same bed unless they are married."

Concluding this tale, Negro Downs told of "the deep passion of hatred and despair which involuntarily boiled within me," described how he conquered it and subsequently addressed the Council on "What We Expect of Our Church" without once referring to his experience.

All this he told last week in an article headed "Did My Church Forsake Me?" and Zion's Herald replied encouragingly, "You were invited to speak in Chicago because the church recognized your ability, loved you. Its faith in you was justified-- you 'made good.' "

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