Budweiser boycott
Nov. 7, 1957
Los Angeles
Here's a story that white Los Angeles will never see: An NAACP boycott
against Anheuser-Busch because it refused to hire African American
truck drivers, plant workers and office staff.
According to the California Eagle, a weekly serving the local African American community, the NAACP was calling on 350,000 blacks in Los Angeles to stop drinking Budweiser until the company ended its biased hiring practices. African American owners of liquor stores and bars were also urged to stop serving the beer.
The story noted that although blacks constituted 8.5% of the local population, they accounted for 18% of the beer sold in Los Angeles. The businesses taking part in the boycott represented about 2,000 cases of Budweiser a month, the Eagle said.
The boycott was called after the Urban League failed to attain equality in hiring despite years of efforts, the story said. The NAACP's labor and industry committee had tried to confer with a West Coast representative of the brewer, but was also unsuccessful.
According to William Pollard of the labor and industry committee, "It is ridiculous that in their entire Los Angeles operations only two Negroes are employed by Budweiser," the Eagle said.
