In the late 1940s, coincident with a Soviet campaign against national chauvinism in Eastern Europe, the U.S. party launched a campaign against white chauvinism, which it described as the key underlying feature of American capitalism’s success in keeping the working class divided.45 The campaign quickly degenerated. Dorothy Ray Healey, then a CP leader in Los Angeles, reflected, “A legitimate concern turned into an obsession” and became “a ritual act of self-purification that did nothing to strengthen the Party in its fight against racism and was manipulated by some Communist leaders for ends which had nothing to do with the ostensible purpose of the whole campaign.” She added, “Once an accusation of white chauvinism was thrown against a white Communist, there was no defense.” In Los Angeles, Healey estimated, the party expelled or dropped two hundred people, “usually on the most trivial of pretexts.” Healey’s description was as accurate for San Francisco as for Los Angeles. CP members who ran afoul of prominent party members were called before the Security Commission, charged with white chauvinism, and expelled or dropped.