Harold Ickes

Question 1

What job was Ickes given at the start of FDR’s presidency in 1933?

Answer 1

Secretary of the Interior

Question 2

What was Ickes’ department responsible for?

Answer 2

Management of National Park System, unappropriated public lands, natural resources, the government of Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Philippines and other US possessions, administration of a plethora of agencies/institutions/subbureaucracies

Question 3

What reputation did Ickes have for his management of his department?

Answer 3

Worked without any taint of corruption a record that earned his the nickname “Honest Harold”

Question 4

In the “Hundred Days” what did Ickes work with Henry Wallce, Frances Perkins and George Dern to establish?

Answer 4

CCC = Civilian Conservation Corps, education of young men in CCC camps while the National Park Service employed thousands to make improvements in the national parks

Question 5

What role did Ickes play in the PWA?

Answer 5

Public Works Administration, helped form and directed the organisation, highly successful, 19,000 projects in total

Question 6

What was Ickes relationship like with Harry Hopkins?

Answer 6

Competitive, each man vying for dominance in the spending of public monies and for the favor of Roosevelt, led to numerous hot-tempered resignations on the part of Ickes, all rejected by FDR

Question 7

What other movements was Ickes outspoken in?

Answer 7

Conservationist, anti-fascism, anti-isolationism, against Nazi persecution of the Jews and other right-wing movements, vigorously promoted Civil Rights (desegregated the Interior Department, appointed William Hastie as the first African-America federal judge, helped Eleanor Roosevelt arrange Marian Anderson’s performance at the Lincoln Memorial, became known as the “informal Secretary of Negro Relations”)