dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

A legend from L.A. when I lived there. I vividly remember the Watts r**ts. Robinson did much to heal the wounds.

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Essential California
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Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Wednesday, July 10, and I’m writing from Los Angeles.

Enterprise business reporter Daniel Miller was still covering the entertainment industry back in 2017 when he received the assignment that would lead him to Big Willie Robinson — and down a yearlong rabbit hole — deep into Los Angeles history, street racing and the unfurling story of an extraordinary man who sought to end the violence in a city torn apart by the 1965 Watts R**ts.

But first, back to spring 2017. The union that represents Hollywood writers was on the verge of a strike that year, and Daniel was sent to write a story about how that strike might affect the local businesses that cater to film and TV productions. The strike was eventually averted, but Daniel talked to florists, caterers, t***sportation firms and the like.

He was out on a dusty car lot out in the deep Valley, interviewing a man whose company outfits vehicles for film and TV, when Ted Moser, the company’s proprietor, stopped in front of a broken-down race car. By then, Daniel had told Moser about his family history (the reporter hails from three generations of L.A. car dealers) and his deep interest in cars.

“I’m paraphrasing,” Daniel recalled, but standing in front of the faded race car, Moser said something like, “You know, if you’re a car guy you should know whose car this was.”

“I gave him a blank look,” Daniel said. “It was evident to him that I had no idea whose car it was.” The car, as you have likely figured out by now, had belonged to the legendary Big Willie Robinson.

“He started telling me the story about Big Willie,” Daniel recalled. “He dropped a lot of boldface names. He mentioned Tom Bradley. He mentioned Otis Chandler, the former publisher of the L.A. Times. He mentioned some of Big Willie’s Hollywood ties and I honestly couldn’t believe it was real.”

Big Willie Robinson

With the support of then-L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, Big Willie Robinson saw his dream of opening Brotherhood Raceway Park on Terminal Island become reality. At center is Big Willie’s wife, Tomiko, herself a street racer. (Howard Koby)

But when Daniel returned to the office and began to research Big Willie, it became clear that much of what Moser had said was verifiable. “I just knew that there was a great story there,” he said. Daniel set Robinson’s story aside for a while, and then returned to it at full force last year, beginning work on what would become the seven-part documentary podcast “Larger Than Life.”

I sat down with Daniel to talk about the podcast, who Big Willie Robinson was and what kind of a role he played in the city.

Who was Big Willie Robinson?

Big Willie Robinson was the founder and leader of the Brotherhood of Street Racers. It’s a group that preaches peace through wheels. The idea is that you can bring people together around cars, and in particular, street racing. And that people’s differences — whether it’s race, class or culture — melt away when they’re working on cars and racing them.

When was this?

Big Willie started pushing this idea in the 1960s in the wake of the Watts r**ts. He got a surprising amount of support from the powers that be in Los Angeles. Cops, politicians — all sorts of people — saw his vision and got behind him. They gave him the backing he needed. And it worked.

As part of the story, I talked to people in law enforcement who said that certain types of crime did go down when Big Willie got involved, particularly crime related to street racing. We should note that street racing is obviously illegal. But Big Willie pushed a safer, more organized way to do it. He eventually opened a racetrack where people could get off the streets and d**g race. Willie and his group pushed a message of positivity at a time when L.A. really needed it.

[Read “Man and myth: Uncovering the legend of Big Willie Robinson” by Daniel Miller]

Can you set the scene for us? What was 1960s L.A. like when Big Willie emerged as a civic figure?

Big Willie really got his start after the Watts r**ts of 1965. In 1966, Willie began to organize as a street racer.

I think it’s important to point out that even though these days the world can feel like a dark and divided place, in the wake of the Watts r**ts, L.A. was deeply damaged and even more troubled. The r**ts exposed the depths of L.A.’s problems when it came to race. You had a city that was largely segregated, with African Americans mostly living in South Los Angeles. The LAPD was considered by many to be a brutal and r****t force, and for some that had been exposed by the r**ts. I think you had city leaders who were looking inward to try to see how they could improve things, while also examining the mistakes that were made that led to the r**ts.

What kind of role did Big Willie play in the aftermath of the r**ts?

Thirty-four people died during the Watts r**ts. Twenty-five were black. Nearly 3,500 people were arrested and more than 1,000 were injured. It was a catastrophe. But, it gave Willie an opportunity. I think that the authorities were desperate for a reset button, and Willie could be a bridge between law enforcement and the communities that they were policing. Maybe at another time, they wouldn’t have given Willie a chance, but he seized the moment and got help from the LAPD and others. With help from the police, Willie was able to better organize street races — making them safer. Later, his racetrack on Terminal Island took things to another level.

Why haven’t more people heard of Big Willie?

Well, I will say that he got plenty of media coverage back in the day. It’s just that it was a long time ago now. It was fun to comb through our own archives and see that we covered Willie pretty regularly in the 1960s, ’70s, and even into the ’80s. Some might say that he got so much coverage because of his friendship with Otis Chandler — that’s a relationship we explore in our podcast. National car magazines also wrote about Willie, and he appeared on local TV news, too. But to your point — he did fade into obscurity as time wore on. And I wanted to find out why.

[Listen to “Larger Than Life,” Daniel Miller’s documentary podcast about Big Willie Robinson]