The Socialist Party of America was founded in 1901 and first ran a national campaign in 1904. Eugene V. Debs was the Socialist Party’s nominee for President and was on the ballot in Maryland in 1904, as well as in 1908, 1912, and 1920. In 1916, Allan Benson represented the SPA on Maryland’s Presidential ballot. Also in 1916, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society held a national conference near Annapolis. The ISS was a national student group founded by prominent Socialists including Clarence Darrow, Jack London, and Upton Sinclair, the Baltimore-born author of The Jungle who later ran as for Congress as the nominee of the Socialist Party. (The ISS would later rename itself as the League for Industrial Democracy, and later its student wing the Student League for Industrial Democracy would rename itself Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), one of the most well-known and influential 1960s student groups.)

One of the attendees of the 1916 conference was Elisabeth Gilman, daughter of the first President of Johns Hopkins University. Elisabeth was inspired by the conference and meetings with Socialists in Europe to join the Socialist Party of America. She helped found the precursor to the Maryland chapter of the ACLU, was active in the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, and was nominated by the Socialist Party to run for Mayor of Baltimore in 1935 and Governor of Maryland in 1930 and 1945.

Elisabeth Gilman was friends with Norman Thomas, a minister who was a Socialist Party leader and nominee for President six times. He was on the ballot for President in Maryland five times from 1928-1940, and again in 1948.

Darlington Hoopes followed Thomas as the Socialist Party’s nominee for President in 1952 and 1956. Although he lived in Pennsylvania as an adult, Hoopes was born in Bel Air, Maryland.

After Hoopes’ campaigns, the Socialist Party did not run a candidate for President again for twenty years. In 1972 the Socialist Party of America met for the final time, where it split into three entities. One of the three – the Socialist Party USA – grew out of the ‘Debs Caucus’, a group of SPA members committed to returning to the Socialist tradition of running candidates independently of the existing capitalist parties. The SPUSA began running candidates again in 1976 and continues today to build an anti-capitalist, worker-run party contesting elections on all levels. In 1980 the Socialist Party USA established the Socialist National Committee, one of eight national political parties authorized by the Federal Election Commission to raise funds for candidates for U.S. House, Senate, and President of the United States.