Robert Welch founds John Birch Society in Indianapolis

Retired Massachusetts candy manufacturer Robert W. Welch Jr. founded the John Birch Society over a two-day meeting with 11 businessmen at an Indianapolis hotel. Welch named the group after Baptist missionary John Birch, an Army intelligence officer killed by Chinese communists in 1945. The society organized chapters to oppose what Welch called communist infiltration of American institutions, accusing President Eisenhower of being a communist agent.