It varied depending on the organization in question and by decade.

One of the first American Marxists, Daniel DeLeon and his Socialist Labor Party founded in 1876 largely ignored the question of race, suggesting that it Ed not relevant to working class struggles. The Socialist Party followed suit after its founding in 1901 and took what we might today call a “workerist” position, emphasizing class above all else and framing other issues as corollaries stemming directly from class antagonisms. By the end of WWI, most of their leadership was serving lengthy prison sentences for violating the laws put in place by the Espionage Act, which banned publicity speaking out against the war.

The CPUSA (the Communist Party) had was much more serious about issues involving race and organizing black workers. Their approach was largely dictated by the shifting policies of the Comintern, the Communist/Third International, an organization comprised of most the communist parties of the world and largely dominated, particularly as time went on, by the Soviet party. The period during the 1930s saw the CPUSA rise to the peak of its historical significance and impact on national and local political issues.

Harlem, during the time of the Harlem Renaissance and the following decade, had a number of active black communists who were part of the overall flowering of culture and consciousness that took place at the time. The 1931 arrest and trial of a group of young black men accused of raping a shire woman on a train and became known as the Scottsboro Boys gained a great deals of publicity for the party and some measure of support among the black population. The CPUSA’s legal wing, International Labor Defense represented the accused and the party organized mass demonstrations in their defense all over the country. The fight to accuse the 9 youths age 13-20 at the time of their arrest, became an internationally celebrated cause. Several of the men becmame party members as did one of their accusers , who recanted her story and spoke in support of the accused and the party.

The events of the trial coincided with a turn in Comintern policy toward a more radical, more militant orientation. The party called for the establishment of an independent black republic in the Black Belt, a majority black region made up of parts of several southern states. The party sent organizers into the black belt to drum up support, and while the idea of an independent black republic never gained much ground, the organizers met with some limited success in sparking interest in radical politics among in the region. For many in the black belt, the communists were the first white people to take their perspectives and needs seriously. The CPUSA’s efforts in the South in the 30’s, which included among other things, openly agitating for full racial equality and openly and illegally holding meetings and social events like barn dances attended by both blacks and whites, laid some of the groundwork for what would later develop into the civil rights movement. That more than anything is the legacy of the CPUSA and represents its greatest influences on US history.

Additionally, CPUSA made some efforts to register black voters and made efforts to push back against the KKK, which was at the height of its influence around this time. Communists back and white also openly criticized the NAACP and other more reformist, less radical black organizations accusing them of serving a small elite segment of the black population and ignoring the needs of poor and working class blacks.

Within the labor movement, black workers were barred from participation by American Federation f Labor (AFL) which both barred all blacks from membership and generally favored skilled labor over the unskilled sector, which most black workers were a part of. The AFL fanned the flames of resentment among white workers at the use of black strikebreakers, some of whom were brought in from some distance away and were not told that they would be scabs.

The IWW, which from its inception promoted racial equality organized black workers alongside white workers where it had a presence and there were at times black participation in stiles called by the IWW and black IWW members in positions of leadership during strikes, most notably during the dock workers strike in Philadelphia in 1913, which was the first time is US history that black and white workers organized side by side in a mixed race grouping. There were also black communists active in workers struggles in the South, most significantly in Birmingham, Alabama. Additionally efforts were made to organize sharecroppers in the Deep South, which saw black and white sharecroppers organizing side by side.

The CPUSA made some efforts to register black voters and agitated against the KKK, which was at the height of its influence around this time. Communists black and white also openly criticized the NAACP and other more reformist, less radical black organizations accusing them of serving a small elite segment of the black population, the black bourgeoisie, and ignoring the needs of poor and working class blacks.

There were in addition to the Socialist Party and CPUSA, smaller, all-black leftist organizations, such as the African Blood Brotherhood, which was later absorbed into the CPUSA, that had some local presence particularly in New York but these formations had less impact that those operating under the auspices of larger left organizations like the IWW and CPUSA.