Big Willie Robinson, the man who spent most of his life fighting for street racers to have a safe place to compete, was born to Lula Mae and Willie Robinson Jr. in New Orleans on Sept. 12, 1942.
He was the oldest of the couple’s five children.
He wouldn’t adopt the “Big Willie” nickname until after leaving New Orleans, but, at 6 feet, 6 inches, and 300 pounds, he already had grown into the moniker as a young man. He attempted to pursue a football career at Louisiana State University, but the school turned him down. (Robinson was Black and LSU wouldn’t integrate its football team until 1972.)
He developed his love of cars from a young age, working alongside his father, who was a body shop repairman. After his prized Oldsmobile 98 was destroyed in an apparently racially motivated attack, the family sent him to live on his own in Los Angeles in 1960.
With hostilities escalating in Vietnam, Robinson enlisted in the U.S. Army, but physical problems with his legs and back caused him to be honorably discharged before completing basic training in 1966.
Robinson would later claim to have fought in Vietnam and usually wore fatigues and a military beret in public. After Robinson’s death, Los Angeles Times reporter Daniel Miller discovered, in 2019, that Robinson had embellished the facts concerning his military service.
But ultimately, that didn’t affect the value of Robinson’s social contributions, which would begin after the 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles crystallized the social and racial inequities in the polarized city.
City officials previously indifferent to the problems of poverty and racial inequity in South Los Angeles suddenly began listening to voices coming from the affected community. Among those who caught their ear was Big Willie Robinson.
As a car buff, Robinson had experienced the dangers of illegal street racing and had been advocating for an organized solution that would allow drag racing in a safer and more controlled…
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