A full century before the Civil Rights movement, and 150
years before the present-day movement for
racial and social justice, there was Octavius
Valentine Catto. His statue unveiled at
Philadelphia City Hall in 2017 - the first
statue built at City Hall since the 1923
memorial to John Wanamaker - Catto was an unsung hero for civil rights who left an
enduring legacy in Pennsylvania and across the
national landscape.
A Renaissance man, Octavius Catto was a scholar and
educator, a civil rights activist, an ordained
minister, an orator and a ballplayer. Born
free in 1839 in Charleston, South Carolina, he
was raised in Philadelphia. He attended the
Institute for Colored Youth, which would later
be known as Cheyney University, where he
became a teacher and principal.
Catto worked with the abolitionist and statesman Frederick
Douglass to recruit hundreds of Black
soldiers to fight for the Union Army in the Civil War. As a
political and civil rights leader, he engaged in civil disobedience to bring about equal
access for African-Americans on the
Philadelphia trolley car system - a century
before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat
to a white man, as part of the Montgomery Bus
Boycott organized by Martin Luther King and
others. An influential insider in the
Republican Party, Catto joined and helped lead
the Pennsylvania Equal Rights League to bring
about black voting rights and the eventual
ratification of the 15th Amendment. Catto also
attended the National Convention of Colored
Men in Syracuse, New York, which gave birth to
the National
Equal Rights League, and organization dedicated to full citizenship rights
for black people.
“De Tocqueville prophesied that if ever America underwent
Revolution, it would be brought about by the
presence of the black race, and that it would
result from the inequality of their
condition,” Catto
once said.
Octavius Catto influenced other areas of society beyond
civil rights and the political realm as well.
For example, he served in the Pennsylvania
National Guard, and became a member of the Franklin
Institute, whose doors had been closed to people of color. And as
an avid cricket and baseball player, he
founded the Philadelphia Pythians professional
baseball club.
Like far too many African-American leaders who have fought
the battles against injustice in this country,
Octavius Catto was assassinated. In 1871, a
year after the 15th Amendment was ratified,
black voters - who were Republican - went to
the polls for the first time. They faced
intimidation and violence from Irish-Americans
who were part of Philly’s Democratic machine.
On Election Day, Catto was harassed by a group
of Irish-Catholic men, and shot to death by a
man named Frank
Kelly. The civil rights leader was on duty with the National
Guard while he was killed. Kelly was a
fugitive for five years until he was tried and
acquitted. Thousands of people attended Catto’s funeral, his viewing held at the City Armory. He was buried at
the Lebanon Cemetery, a black cemetery.
“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.
