Patty Loew:
Wisconsin beers have won numerous awards and the state enjoys a great beer making tradition thanks in no small part to the many German immigrants. But Germans aren't the only ethnic group with a story to tell. The nation's first African-American-owned brewery was here in Wisconsin. Reporter Andy Soth has the story of People’s Brewery in Oshkosh.

Andy Soth:
He's known as the Real Beer Man. Or at least that's the name of his column. Devoted exclusively to beer and brewing.

Jim Lundstrom:
Yes, beer is a common element running through my life. I can't help that.

Andy Soth:
His name is Jim Lundstrom and he is also the editor of the Scene newspaper, an alternative monthly in central and northeast Wisconsin. It's run out of a Menasha storefront, though Lundstrom will tell you his real office is a few doors down. The Club Tavern seemed like the perfect place to sit down and hear one of his favorite beer stories.

Jim Lundstrom:
Bigger than beer but certainly beer led me to it.

Andy Soth:
It's a story of changing times. And of a city that wasn't quite ready.

Jim Lundstrom:
It was largely a forgotten part of local history,

Andy Soth:
It’s the story of People’s Brewery in Oshkosh.

Jim Lundstrom:
What could be a better name for the first black-owned brewery in the country, People’s Brewery?

Andy Soth:
They didn't come up with the name. People’s Brewery had been operating since 1911 but a group of African-American entrepreneurs from Milwaukee, led by Ted Mack, did buy Peoples in 1970 making it the nation's first black-owned brewery. Peoples was popular in Oshkosh, but the new owners thought they could find new markets.

Jim Lundstrom:
Ted Mack came in and thought well, I want to keep that core base but I want to expand to Milwaukee with the black population there, Gary, Indiana and the US military.

Andy Soth:
Mack thought he could sell Peoples on US military bases with a government contract for minority-owned businesses. But as he tried to develop that market, the core Oshkosh customer base wasn't taking well to the ownership change.

Stephen Kercher:
With a product that is held with such reverence here, beer, which comes from this German-American tradition, the idea of black owners struck many as anathema.

Andy Soth:
Stephen Kercher created this exhibit on the UW-Oshkosh campus. It helps paint a picture of what Oshkosh was like around the time Peoples Brewery changed hands. It's about Black Thursday, a day in 1968 when African-American students, tired of discrimination on campus and in the community, took over the university president's office.

Stephen Kercher:
1968, like many other communities throughout the United States, Oshkosh was beginning to resist the massive social changes that were taking place in the United States.

Andy Soth:
That year segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace drew large crowds at Oshkosh. It was only two years later that Ted Mack bought Peoples Brewery and be moved to down.

Jim Lundstrom:
A black man from Milwaukee coming to live in their lily white community with his kids, sending them to the local school and trying the make a difference and trying to make a business work as the first black-owned brewery in the nation.

Andy Soth:
The resistance was immediate.

Jim Lundstrom:
Public perception, that was, the 21 workers were going to lose their jobs and the revolution was coming to downtown Oshkosh. And look out.

Andy Soth:
Allen Repp grew up in his father's bar and runs it today. He remembers when Peoples just stopped selling.

Allen Repp:
I think we were the third largest distributor of the tap beer but after so long you had to take it off. Like anything else that doesn't move, you have to take it off.

Andy Soth:
Nasty rumors spread that the Peoples’ beer was being watered down or tampered with. The new owners went to great lengths to demonstrate the beer didn't change.

Allen Repp:
Independent taste tests even out of town, even out of state, won as far as taste, eye appeal, there was nothing wrong with the product.

Andy Soth:
Sales were declining in Oshkosh. There were distribution problems in Milwaukee and Gary, Indiana and the hope for military contracts weren't working out. Even without all these problems the deck was stacked against them.         

Jim Lundstrom:
It was a time when the big breweries were merging and buying up other places and consolidating. All of that killed the regionals. In the 1970s, the worst time ever. They were gone. Hardly any left now.

Andy Soth:
In 1972 Peoples Brewery ceased operations and so did two other Wisconsin breweries, Potosi and Lithia. Something was lost when each stopped making beer but Peoples had also made history and that's a story worth remembering.

Jim Lundstrom:
The history of beer, what could be better? I don't know.

Patty Loew:
If you'd like to know more about the Black Thursday protests at UW-Oshkosh you can see images and hear the voices of those involved by going to our website at wpt.org and then scroll down and click on "In Wisconsin."