Downer is the codirector of the Feminist Women's Health Center in Los Angeles. Using the testimony of undercover agents sent into the center, city authorities charged Downer with practicing medicine without a license. The charge was based on Downer's use of yogurt as a home remedy for a friend's vaginal yeast infection.

For more than a year, the Feminist Women's Health Center has conducted classes aimed at increasing women's knowledge of their anatomy, reducing their self-consciousness about their bodies, and teaching them basic gynecological care. The center also has an abortion referral service.

The indictment of Downer received a nationwide media coverage, and as a result her defense efforts won significant national support. Downer's supporters attended the five days of trial proceedings. One teacher brought her high school class, mostly Black women, to a session of the trial.

The prosecution's case against Downer began to fall apart when Adah Maurer, a Berkeley child psychologist, testified that Downer was participating in a Western Psychological Association symposium the day that undercover agent Sharyn Dalton claimed Downer had offered her illegal medical aid.

December 22, 1947
CHICAGO, Dec. 16-The campaign to win freedom for James Hickman ended in victory today, when he walked out of Cook County Jail, free to return to his family and his job.

The State had attempted to convict him of murder in the first trial, which ended Nov. 15 with a "hung jury."

Faced with mounting protests from all parts of the country, the State dropped the murder charge this week, and recommended a two years' probationary sentence based on a manslaughter conviction. Under these terms Hickman agreed to plead guilty to the charge of manslaughter.

In his speech recommending probation for Hickman, Assistant State's Attorney Samuel Friedman testified to the powerful public sentiment that had been aroused in the case when he held up a sheaf of letters, resolutions and telegram urging freedom for Hickman that had been received from all parts of the U.S.

Hickman had spent five months in the country jail, without bail on the charge of murdering his landlord, David Coleman, whom he held responsible for the death of his four youngest children in a disastrous attic fire last January.

Hickman had never denied killing Coleman, but the defense movement came to his aid because the real cause of the killing was the intolerable housing conditions under which he had suffered and the criminal actions of the landlord.  
 
 
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