Negro churches
and colleges, along with interracial organizations, began to
establish the foundation for the long hard struggle for racial
equality which lay ahead.
Making the World Safe for Democracy
While Negroes and some whites were engaged in trying to put
American ideals into practice within the country, others were
reaching out to spread American democracy to more
"underprivileged" peoples. American society had always contained
a missionary dynamic. The Puritan Fathers came to America to
escape religious oppression and to establish what they believed
would be the Kingdom of God. While it appeared that all they
wanted was space in which to be left alone, their conviction that
they were building God's Kingdom implied a belief that their new
society would prosper and spread. If it were really the Kingdom
of God, it could not be expected to remain an insignificant
settlement on a distant and unimportant continent. For the next
two hundred years, this missionary dynamic was absorbed in
spreading across the North American continent. While the
Americans did not see their expansion into the West as being
imperialistic, American Indians saw it otherwise.
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