Just as brings ideological platitudes, so does it require a counterbalance of reality. One test of a democratic government is the degree to which it permits minority expression in wartime. While the minority voice of Nazi Germany has been driven underground, in America, since perhaps the abolitionist crusade of slave days, it has never been stronger. During the two World Wars of this century, catchphrases justifying America's participation have hinged upon the noble motive of saving an errant world. In World War I, we fought a war to end wars in order that we might make the world safe for democracy. Today, in World War II, we fight for the Four Freedoms. This paper attempts to indicate how pressure groups maintain morale among Negroes during wartime by giving substance and meaning to patriotic fervor in terms of freedoms on the home front. Thus far the pattern of pressure group activity in the first two World Wars has been startlingly similar. On Saturday, July 28, 1917, two months after America's entrance into World War I, fifteen thousand Negroes marched down blase Fifth Avenue in New York City in silent protest against segregation, discrimination, disfranchisement, lynching, and the host of evils forced upon their race in this country.' Twenty five years later-five months before Pearl Harbor, 50,000 Negroes planned