The John Birch Society, an anticommunist organization, was founded in 1958 by candy manufacturer Robert Welch (1899–1980). Welch was a North Carolinian raised as a fundamentalist Baptist. A child prodigy, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at age sixteen and entered the business world, eventually founding his own candy company (inventing the Sugar Daddy), and after its failure during the Great Depression, becoming the director of sales at his brother's candy firm. He was a passionate anticommunist, growing more so in the early years of the Cold War. In 1954 he published The Life of John Birch, the story of a Baptist missionary killed by Chinese communists in 1945 (ostensibly the first American victim of the Cold War).

Welch served on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), a business organization critical of governmental intervention in the economy. In December 1958, using his ties to...