The Amazing Story of Charlie Walker, Who Fought Racism and Made $ 5 Million When Oil Flooded SF Bay

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“San Francisco is always up to something, and that night she was all over the top,” Charlie Walker recalls. “Crude oil that is – all over the damn beautiful bay.” Two Standard Oil Company tankers collided in the early hours of the morning and spilled their guts of dull black jelly-like crude oil. Walker was right. Eight hundred thousand gallons of oil spilled into the bay in the early morning hours of January 18, 1971, when two tankers belonging to Standard Oil collided under the Golden Gate Bridge. It would be the largest oil spill in Bay Area history and an event that changed the life of the Hunters Point trucker forever. His story is now told in an upcoming film, “Je suis Charlie Walker”, from director Patrick Gilles, starring Mike Colter (of Marvel’s “Luke Cage” fame) and Safiya Fredericks (“Sorry to disturb you”). — “Black green and shiny, the oil reflected the brilliant sun of yesterday as it moved inexorably over the beaches,” wrote the San Francisco Chronicle the day after the Arizona Standard and Oregon crash. Standard and start dumping oil in the bay.

The fight was immediately launched to protect the fragile ecosystem of the bay, as well as thousands of birds and seals, from the oil. But, colored by the systemic racism of San Francisco politics, the incident would also lead to yet another battle, this one between a Big Oil goliath, Marin County hippies, and a man who was willing to piss off a lot of people. people to change San Francisco (and make money along the way).

Volunteers carry buckets of oil soaked hay from Agate Beach to Bolinas, Calif., January 21, 1971.

MediaNews Group / East Bay Times v / MediaNews Group via Getty Images

The spill occurred around 1:45 am, as the two huge tankers passed each other in thick fog below deck. The incoming Arizona slammed into the outgoing Oregon, causing a gaping hole in its hull, from which the 4 million gallons of oil on board began to spill into the rough waters.

“Both tankers were from Standard, so there was no blame game. But they didn’t have the resources for that kind of spill, so they relied on local truckers, ”says Gilles,“ but there was still essentially a black truckers union and a white truckers union in San Francisco in San Francisco. the time.

Walker grew up in the South but moved to San Francisco as a teenager when, at age 14, he falsified his birth certificate in order to join the Air Force. After serving three years, he returned to Hunters Point, started a small trucking company (with a truck) there, and befriended future San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. Walker soon saw that the trucking job in San Francisco was not a level playing field.

The front page of the San Francisco Chronicle for January 19, 1971 published the story of the oil spill.

Chronicle of San Francisco

“Charlie didn’t want to join the black union because they didn’t have a job. He wanted to join the white union, but they did not let him do it, ”says Gilles. Walker’s protest against inequality resulted in acts of civil disobedience. He would go to the white union sites with his truck to knock down fences and push things. “He said, ‘Stop me, I want to be in the newspaper. I want to be seen, ”says Gilles. “He didn’t care about the color, he wanted to be in the union that had work. “

After the spill, white unionized truckers were hired to clean up the city’s main tourist attractions, Ocean Beach and Baker Beach, but through sheer luck and persistence, Walker landed a small contract to clean up remote Stinson Beach in Marin.

“When you have a racist institution, if only 5% of them don’t buy into racism, there is a gap. And Walker found someone in Richmond who gave him that shitty beach, miles from the spill, ”says Gilles. “This guy got his ass eaten out as he opened the door.”

Stinson was a beach truckers didn’t want: there was no access for a tractor and trailer, it was over an hour away, and there wasn’t even a lot of oil to clean up.

Then the ocean currents brought Charlie a gift.

Strange ocean patterns have gripped the oil, blowing most of it towards the Potato Patch near the Farallon Islands. The currents then changed again, sending the oil northwest, where it hit Stinson Beach hard, and Walker got the contract.

Charlie Walker today.

FAMM Films

The contract said Walker was the boss, and he hired dozens of white truckers to clean up the sands, remove tar from birds, and make money from Standard Oil.

“It’s been 50 years since the devastating 1971 San Francisco Bay oil spill changed my life forever,” Walker, now 88, still living in Hunters Point, told SFGATE. “I had a truck in my name and had to fight a billion dollar oil company that hired me to fix their mistake, but no one was going to stop me from finishing the job. I won $ 5 million in 30 days.

Suddenly, the area was witnessing a massive cleanup operation led by a black man who was not even allowed to join the union.

“They had to get him out of there right away,” said Gilles. “From Standard Oil to the White Truckers Union to parts of the community of Marin, no one wanted him there. “

“But Charlie can disarm anyone. He would sit with people who didn’t like his skin color and say, “Forget the black, only worry about the green. We don’t need to be friends, but get paid. They all played checkers and he played chess.

The community there was also suspicious of Standard. The fight pitted hippies against Big Oil, truckers against a racist system. And neither of them liked Walker’s look at his head.

Three workers pick up oil from suction pipes on the shore of Sausalito on January 18, 1971. Two Standard Oil Company of California tankers passing under the Golden Gate Bridge collided in the morning fog spilling 800,000 gallons of oil which spread north to Tomales Bay, south to Santa Cruz, and 10 miles offshore.

MediaNews Group / East Bay Times v / MediaNews Group via Getty Images

“The reason institutionalized racism works so well is because it is faceless,” says Gilles. “Anyone claiming to be the messenger, ‘I was told to fire this guy’ or ‘This guy was ordered to fire this guy.’ There is no written record, it’s like the mafia.

It’s unclear exactly who forced Walker to leave. Soon the White Truckers Union took over the operation, but Walker had a head start and knew he would be fired soon. in a knife fight and he was using a knife, ”says Gilles.

Standard Oil then accused Walker of embezzlement and sued him. At trial, he was acquitted by a jury made up of his peers in San Francisco. Gilles says Walker probably walked away with a lot of money. “This guy from Hunters Point sent his three daughters to college, bought a house, bought his wife a new luxury car every few years.”

Most of the headlines on Charlie Walker in the archives do not tell the story of his Stinson Beach cleanup or his victory against racism in the industry, but of his controversial run-ins with San Francisco city politics and his relationship with his lifelong friend, Willie Brown. (who has an appearance in the film as a cab driver, when actually Walker was Brown’s driver in the 1980s).

Mike Colter plays Charlie Walker, while former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown makes an appearance in “I Am Charlie Walker”.

FAMM Films

In 1984, a San Francisco Superior Court jury convicted Walker of perjury and tax evasion for shaking up white entrepreneurs who were forced to hire 10% black workers under the city’s affirmative action laws. . Walker was sentenced to 6 years but was paroled in 1987 from Folsom Prison for good behavior after becoming the warden’s driver. In a surprising (and unsubstantiated) turn of history, in 1991, after the Gulf War, San Francisco columnist Herb Caen reported that Walker was in Kuwait after he landed a $ 20 million cleanup contract there. -low. “Charlie, I mean Charles’s contract was handled by Willie Brown, who only seems to be everywhere at once,” Caen wrote. Opinions about Walker vary wildly depending on who you talk to. At Hunters Point, most see him as an advocate who has fought for community members for nearly seven decades. In the 1982 trial that sent him to jail, Walker spoke up and said: “All over the country, black people in their neighborhoods are killing and shooting each other and the system never does anything. this subject. Now they get the idea [racial slur] outside [in Hunters Point] steal others [racial slur], and they want to be our mother and father at the same time. But the press over the years has been scathing towards Walker, perhaps in part because of his contempt for journalists. In 1999, the San Francisco Examiner reported that the FBI was investigating a gala it hosted for Brown at Davies Symphony Hall with Al Green. In the story, Walker was described as “burley and blunt” after telling the reporter, “You are used to hurting black people financially, because this is white people ‘s journey. Otherwise, we have no reason to speak. Walker would then have asked for a quote of $ 250,000. “Walker was a laissez-faire capitalist. He never hurt anyone physically, but if he takes your money, it’s a shame for you, ”says Gilles.

“I Am Charlie Walker” is independently produced by FAMM Films in the Bay Area. The producers said the studios were initially put off by the controversies surrounding the story, so they found a passionate independent financier in the Bay Area, Bill O’Keeffe, to fund it.

“Now that we’ve finished post-production on the film, those same studios are showing interest,” said producer Mark Harris. “It seems the events of the past few years have changed people’s views on telling the story of a living black legend. Some members of the black community had problems with how in “The Green Book” and “Hidden Figures” needed a “white savior” to the rescue.

“We don’t have a white savior coming to Charlie’s rescue. He didn’t need to be saved.

Editor’s Note: The author of this story had an optional script by FAMM Films. The screenplay was written before the author’s time at SFGATE.

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