The Stadium That Spurred Orange County's Right-Wing Conservatism

Glover Stadium in Anaheim's La Palma Park hosts high school football, baseball, soccer and commencement ceremonies. In 1961, it also served as the staging ground for a week-long rally held by the Orange County School of Anti-Communism, spurring Orange County's passionate brand of mid-century conservatism.

Orange County cultural heavyweights who organized this event included burger magnate Carl Karcher, prominent Christan pastor Robert A. Schuller, and Walter Knott, a farmer who turned his land into an amusement park that continues to this day, and whose proceeds he used to fund far-right causes across Southern California.

School districts in Orange County allowed students to miss classes to attend "Anti-Red School" at this stadium. The press reported that 12,000 attendees filled the 7,500-seat stadium to listen to speeches with titles like "How to Debate with Communists and Fellow Travelers," "Why Millionaires, College Professors and Ministers of Religion Become Communists" and "Communist Psychiatry and Crime." Television star Herb Philbrick told students: "Communists are rough, tough, nasty and they hate you." The event's organizers explained that anyone who considered this school "alarmist" may themselves be Communist.

Explore some of the spaces in Orange County shaped by the Cold War. Click on the starred map points to read more in-depth stories.

Taped lectures of the event were played for years afterward at community groups across Orange County. It spurred study groups and affinity networks, including the Orange County Freedom Forum, which opened bookstores in Fullerton, Costa Mesa, Garden Grove and Anaheim that sold literature published by the John Birch Society and other far-right groups.

Further Reading:
McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Nickerson, Michelle. Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right. Princeton University Press, 2012.