Socialist Party of America
A significant US party of 1901 to 1972, led by Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas at its height.
Overview
Founded in 1901 from a merger of dissident groups, the Socialist Party reached roughly one hundred thousand members and twelve hundred local officials, with Milwaukee electing Socialist mayors for decades. Eugene Debs won six percent of the vote for president from a prison cell in 1920. The party championed labor rights, women suffrage, and civil liberties, but antiwar stances brought repression in 1917-1919, and factional fights with communists bled it. Norman Thomas carried the banner through four more campaigns. The party shrank after the New Deal absorbed much of its program and formally dissolved in 1972. Its legacy runs through Social Security debates and democratic socialist politics revived in recent years.
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