Somebody I don’t remember ever learning about: Harold Ickes. Here’s a passage in Episode 5 of Ken Burns’s series The National Parks – America’s Best Idea:

No one was more willing to take on entrenched interests than the president’s irascible Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, a self-described old curmudgeon. A Chicago lawyer and former Republican stalwart known equally for his explosive temper and his fierce devotion to New Deal policies, he had become one of Roosevelt’s closest and most controversial advisors.

“The meanest man who ever sat in a cabinet office in Washington,” Horace Albright said, “and the best Secretary of the Interior we ever had.”

Ickes fought battles on every front. One of his first acts was to abolish the department’s* segregated lunchrooms. Then he told the national parks in the South to simply ignore local Jim Crow laws requiring separate facilities for blacks. At Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, signs segregating campgrounds or picnic areas were quietly taken down. . . .”

Written by Dayton Duncan, author of this beautiful book that I’ve read: Out West: An American Journey

To end the episode, Burns and author Dayton Duncan return to the notions of freedom and equality.

In the midst of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, the world renowned contralto Marian Anderson had been denied the opportunity to perform in Constitution Hall, the 4,000-seat auditorium controlled by the Daughters of the American Revolution, because of the color of her skin.

At the urging of Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, who had once been the head of the NAACP in Chicago, quickly issued Anderson permission to sing at a different venue, the Lincoln Memorial, a recent addition to the national park system. The concert was free and drew a crowd of 75,000 of all races and creeds.

HAROLD ICKES: “Genius, genius draws no color line, and so it is fitting that Marian Anderson should raise her voice in tribute to the notable Lincoln, whom mankind will ever honor. Miss Marian Anderson.”

After being introduced by Ickes, Anderson stepped to the microphone and began her program.

She sings: “My country, ’tis of thee / Sweet land of liberty / Of thee we sing / Land where my fathers died / Land of our pilgrims’ pride / From every mountainside / Let freedom ring . . .”

As she sings “Ave Maria,” the voiceover returns:

ICKES: “In this great auditorium under the sky, all of us are free. When God gave us this wonderful outdoors and the sun and the sun and the moon and the stars, he made no distinction of race or creed or color. . . .”

And “Ave Maria” continues. . . .

This seemed an appropriate bit of information for these days through which we’re living and learning.

Postscript: And in the same episode, beautiful black & white images fill the screen while a lone fiddle plays and a man provides a voiceover:

[“]Fortunate he is who may see Mount McKinley against the summer midnight sky, the lush fern forests of Kilauea, the white jubilance of Yosemite’s waters, and the somber rock and surf of Acadia National Park. To record and interpret these qualities for others, to brighten the drab mood of cities, and build high horizons of the spirit on the edge of plain and desert, these are some of the many obligations of art.[“] — Ansel Adams

In 1938, a book arrived at Harold Ickes’ office, entitled Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail. It was filled with stunning images of the mountainous Kings River Canyon region of the souther Sierra, captured by an aspiring photographer named Ansel Adams. This was his first book of landscapes, and since he knew that Ickes was interested in making the area a national park, Adams had sent it along with his personal compliments. Ickes took it to the White House to show President Roosevelt, who liked it so much he quickly appropriated it for his own. Ansel Adams was on his way to becoming the most influential photographer for the cause of national parks since William Henry Jackson‘s images of Yellowstone had helped persuade Congress to create the world’s first park in 1872.

[“]There is this unending argument about whether art can affect human affairs, and I think Ansel is one great example of how it did.[“] — Kenneth Brower

*Department of the Interior