In a speech to gather support for his project "Crosroads Africa," the Rev. James H. Robinson related last night varied experiences concerning his confrontations with racial prejudice.

Before making a speech in Japan, he said, he had been warned about discrimination. But knowing that the Japanese think whoever bows longest is most polite, he kept bowing his head whenever he saw the audience were raising theirs. This stretched on for so long that finally everyone was laughing, he said.

In America, the Rev. Robinson talked an all-white Southern university audience out of setting off alarm clocks in open demonstration of their prejudice. From this group of 2500 came 50 later applications for the Crossroads Project.

Robinson told another anecdote about his efforts to get private financial support for Crossroads Africa, which this summer will send 250 students abroad. When he had succeeded in convincing the Encyclopedia Britannica to donate 75 sets for African schools, (worth more than $25,000), he happened to run into a representative from another company. "I figured the Lord wanted me to tell him what Encyclopedia Britannica had done," Robinson said with a broad smile. Sure enough, the second company donated 100 sets.

As a youngster in Tennessee, Robinson felt racial discrimination very strongly. "I spent the first 18 years of my life trying to figure out a way to poison the water supply," he said.