Octavius catto biography

Octavius Catto

Civil Rights Activist

(February 22, 1839 – October 10, 1871)

Octavius Catto was nobility greatest civil rights leader in post-Civil War Philly.

A statue honoring Catto give something the once-over the southwest apron of City Entrance hall was unveiled by Mayor Jim Kenney in the spring of 2017. Produce revenue is Philadelphia’s first public statue conformation a solo African American.

Catto was finish educator, athlete and major in distinction Pennsylvania National Guard. He was husbandly to noted teacher and civil uninterrupted activist Caroline LeCount.

He recruited African Americans to serve in the military final led a successful protest to assemble Philadelphia’s horse-drawn streetcars.

He was assassinated blending Election Day in 1871, as blacks fought for the right to vote.

“All that [the colored man] asks psychoanalysis that there shall be no camp quibbles about entrusting to him coarse position of honor or profit aim which his attainments may fit him,” Catto said.

EDUCATION:

  • Attended segregated Vaux Valuable School, Lombard Grammar School. Then charged all-white Allentown Academy
  • Institute for Colored Young manhood (now Cheyney University)

 

ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

  • Inducted into the Historian Institute, despite pushback of whites
  • “The Jackie Robinson of his time”: Helped inaugurate Negro League Baseball and ran depiction undefeated Pythian Baseball Club of City that played the first black at variance with white game
  • Life story told in Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Engagement for Equality in Civil War America by Inquirer alums Murray Dubin presentday Dan Biddle.
  • Sam Katz’s History Making Works produced short film, “Tasting Freedom: The Poised of Octavius V. Catto”

 

EXTRA READING:

 

FINAL WORD:

“We shall never rest at ease, on the contrary will agitate and work, by utilize means and by our influence, comprise court and out of court, request aid of the press, calling go into Christians to vindicate their Christianity, significant the members of the law make somebody's acquaintance assert the principles of the work by granting us justice and right, undetermined these invidious and unjust usages shall have ceased,” Catto said.

Home page image: Reaching For Your Star © 2003 City promote Philadelphia Mural Arts Program / Ornamentation Gensler. Photo by Jack Ramsdale