In 2016, Charles Barkley marked Black History Month with a daily spotlight on local African-American heroes. Many of them didn’t make it into the history books or even the newspapers of their time. But their stories are inspiring and worth knowing. Here’s another look.
05
Octavius Catto
Civil Rights Activist
Octavius Catto
Civil Rights Activist
(February 22, 1839 – October 10, 1871)
Octavius Catto was the greatest civil rights leader in post-Civil War Philly.
A statue honoring Catto on the southwest apron of City Hall was unveiled by Mayor Jim Kenney in the spring of 2017. It is Philadelphia’s first public statue honoring a solo African American.
Catto was an educator, athlete and major in the Pennsylvania National Guard. He was married to noted teacher and civil rights activist Caroline LeCount.
He recruited African Americans to serve in the military and led a successful protest to integrate Philadelphia’s horse-drawn streetcars.
He was assassinated on Election Day in 1871, as blacks fought for the right to vote.
“All that [the colored man] asks is that there shall be no unmanly quibbles about entrusting to him any position of honor or profit for which his attainments may fit him,” Catto said.
EDUCATION:
- Attended segregated Vaux Primary School, Lombard Grammar School. Then attended all-white Allentown Academy
- Institute for Colored Youth (now Cheyney University)
ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
- Inducted into the Franklin Institute, despite pushback of whites
- “The Jackie Robinson of his time”: Helped establish Negro League Baseball and ran the undefeated Pythian Baseball Club of Philadelphia that played the first black versus white game
- Life story told in Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America by Inquirer alums Murray Dubin and Dan Biddle.
- Sam Katz’s History Making Productions produced short film, “Tasting Freedom: The Life of Octavius V. Catto”
EXTRA READING:
FINAL WORD:
“We shall never rest at ease, but will agitate and work, by our means and by our influence, in court and out of court, asking aid of the press, calling upon Christians to vindicate their Christianity, and the members of the law to assert the principles of the profession by granting us justice and right, until these invidious and unjust usages shall have ceased,” Catto said.
Home page image: Reaching For Your Star © 2003 City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program / Don Gensler. Photo by Jack Ramsdale
