Communist Party of Maryland

During the 1920s, Lithuanian Hall in the Hollins Market neighborhood was used as a venue for speeches by prominent members of the Communist Party USA, such as William Z.

Parker had been involved in politics for many years, but was inspired to run for governor after becoming disillusioned with the two major parties after the defeat of Al Smith in the 1928 presidential election.

[1] In 1934, the lawyer Bernard Ades ran for Governor of Maryland on the Communist Party ticket and received less than 8,000 votes.

[4] From 1937 until the 1940s, the CP of Maryland ran a communist bookstore called the Free State Bookshop.

The party focused its recruiting on companies with many blue-collar workers... Often, national leaders such as Earl Browder and William Z.

The party held rallies... and fielded candidates in local elections... After World War II... most of Baltimore's communists went underground.

One Evening Sun headline of the time: "FBI Informer Calls Meyers Key State Red."

Postwar prosperity and ideological differences with Soviet communism proved too much for Baltimore's communists, and the local party all but disappeared...1970s, and winning restatement in Maryland (1974) and federal courts (1975).