Patty Loew:
A Wisconsin beer might be a better gift for the Chinese. Wisconsin enjoys a great beer-making heritage due to the German immigrants who settled here. 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's also the editor of the Scene newspaper, an alternative monthly in central and northeast Wisconsin. It's run out of a Menasha storefront, though he’ll 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-Americans from Milwaukee did buy People’s in 1970, making it the nation's first black-owned brewery. People's was popular in Oshkosh, but the new owners thought they could also 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 People's on US military bases with a contract government 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 an anathema.

Andy Soth:
UW Oshkosh historian Stephen Kercher curated this exhibit on campus. It paints a picture of what Oshkosh was like around the time the brewery changed hands. It's about Black Thursday, in 1968, when African-Americans students, tired of discrimination on campus and in the community, took over the university president's office.

Stephen Kercher:
In 1968, like many other community 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 in Oshkosh. It was only two years later that Ted Mack brought People's Brewery and moved to town.
Jim Lundstrom:
Here's a black man from Milwaukee coming to live in their lily white community with his kids, sending them to the local school and trying to make a difference and trying to make a business work as the first black-owned brewery in the nation.

Andy Soth:
But 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. Look out.

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

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

Andy Soth:
Nasty rumors spread that People's beer was being watered down or otherwise tampered with. The new owners went to great lengths to demonstrate that the beer had not changed.

Allen Repp:
Independent taste tests out of town and even out of state, it won as far as taste, eye appeal, everything, so there’s nothing wrong with the product.

Andy Soth:
Sales were declining in Oshkosh. There were distribution problems in Milwaukee and Gary. And the hope for military contracts weren't working out. But 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. The '70s, worst time ever. They were gone.

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

Jim Lundstrom:
History and beer? What could be better? I don't know.  

Patty Loew:
The exhibit on the Black Thursday protests at UW-Oshkosh just opened at the Wisconsin black historical society museum in Milwaukee. You can see images and hear the voices of those involved by going to our website at wpt.org/inwisconsin. The exhibit runs through this summer.