In the United States, the socialist and communist movement has a long tradition of fighting racism. Despite this radical history of multiracial struggle fighting both racism and capitalism, the idea of a “white left” somehow divorced from the struggle for racial justice persists. But the U.S. Communist party of the 1930s and '40s focused intensely on connecting the struggle for socialism with the fight for Black liberation and, in doing so, took up the fights against lynching, for tenant farming, integration, against evictions, and against police brutality; building up in the process a sizable multiracial party. The lessons of this important history are vital for building the left today.