"Ickes symbolized for black (and many white) Americans the engaged, moral reformer, committed to the cause of assuring the underdog an elevated status in the American system. In 1936 he told a gathering of black Americans that he had "always felt it to be my privilege, no less than my duty, to do everything in my power to see that the Negro was given that degree of justice and fair play to which he is entitled." It was his sense of "fair play" which led him to support Marian Anderson in her celebrated conflict with the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1939 and to introduce her to a huge throng massed before the statue of Abraham Lincoln. The Journal of Negro Education remarked that the "brevity and force" of Ickes' speech that day was destined to rival Lincoln's Gettysburg address. Due largely to Ickes' efforts, a number of prominent blacks were brought into the administration during the thirties and forties to serve as race relations advisers in the New Deal departments and agencies."