Octavius Catto
Octavius Valentine Catto was an American educator, intellectual, and civil rights activist. He became principal of male students at the Institute for Colored Youth, where he had also been educated. Born free in Charleston, South Carolina, in a prominent mixed-race family, he moved north as a boy with his family. After completing his education, he went into teaching, and became active in civil rights. He also became known as a top cricket and baseball player in 19th-century Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He helped organize and played for the Philadelphia Pythians baseball team. He was shot and killed on election-day in Philadelphia, where ethnic Irish of the Democratic Party, who were anti-Reconstruction and had opposed black suffrage, attacked black men to prevent their voting.
Early life
Octavius Catto was born free. His mother Sarah Isabella Cain was a free member of the city's prominent mixed-race DeReef family, which had been free for decades and belonged to the Brown Fellowship Society, a mark of their status. His father, William T. Catto, had been an enslaved millwright in South Carolina who gained his freedom. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister before taking his family north, first to Baltimore, and then to Philadelphia, where they settled in the free state of Pennsylvania. The state had gradually abolished slavery, beginning before the end of the Revolutionary War.William T. Catto was a founding member of Philadelphia's Banneker Institute, an African-American intellectual and literary society. He wrote "A Semi-Centenary Discourse", a history of the First African Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.
Catto began his education at Vaux Primary School and then Lombard Grammar School, institutions specifically for the education of African-Americans, in Philadelphia. In 1853, he entered the, otherwise, all-white Allentown Academy in Allentown, New Jersey, located across the Delaware River and 40 miles north. In 1854, when his family returned to Philadelphia, he became a student at that city's Institute for Colored Youth. Managed by the Society of Friends, ICY's curriculum included the classical study of Latin, Greek, geometry, and trigonometry.
While a student at ICY, Catto presented papers and took part in scholarly discussions at "a young men's instruction society". Led by fellow ICY student Jacob C. White Jr., they met weekly at the ICY. Catto graduated from ICY in 1858, winning praise from principal Ebenezer Bassett for "outstanding scholarly work, great energy, and perseverance in school matters." Catto did a year of post-graduate study, including private tutoring in both Greek and Latin, in Washington, D. C.
Activism and influence
In 1859, he returned to Philadelphia, where he was elected full member and Recording Secretary of the Banneker Institute. He also was hired as teacher of English and mathematics at the ICY.On May 10, 1864, Catto delivered ICY's commencement address, which gave a historical synopsis of the school. In addition, Catto's address touched on the issue of the potential lack of sensitivity of white teachers toward the needs and interests of African-American students:
It is at least unjust to allow a blind and ignorant prejudice to so far disregard the choice of parents and the will of the colored tax-payers, as to appoint over colored children white teachers, whose intelligence and success, measured by the fruits of their labors, could neither obtain nor secure for them positions which we know would be more congenial to their tastes.
Catto also spoke of the Civil War, then in progress. He believed that the United States government had to evolve several times in order to change. He understood that the change must come not necessarily for the benefit of African Americans, but more for America's political and industrial welfare. This would be a mutual benefit for all Americans.
... It is for the purpose of promoting, as far as possible, the preparation of the colored man for the assumption of these new relations with intelligence and with the knowledge which promises success, that the Institute feels called upon at this time to act with more energy and on a broader scale than has heretofore been required.
On January 2, 1865, at a gathering at the National Hall in Philadelphia to celebrate the second anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Catto "delivered a very able address, and one that was a credit to the mind and heart of the speaker."
In 1869, Bassett left ICY when he was appointed ambassador to Haiti. Catto lobbied to succeed Bassett as principal; however, the ICY board chose Catto's fellow teacher, Fanny Jackson Coppin, as head of the school. Catto was elected as the principal of the ICY's male department. In 1870, Catto joined the Franklin Institute, a center for science and education whose white leaders supported Catto's membership despite his race, in the face of some opposition. Catto served as principal and teacher at ICY until his death in 1871. His successor in the position was Richard Theodore Greener.
Sportsman
Catto was active not just in the public arenas of education and equal rights, but also on the sporting field. Like many other young men of Philadelphia, both white and black, Catto began playing cricket while in school, as it was a British tradition. Later he took up the American sport of baseball. Following the Civil War, he helped establish Philadelphia as a major hub of what became Negro league baseball. Along with Jacob C. White, Jr., he ran the Pythian Base Ball Club of Philadelphia. The Pythians had an undefeated season in 1867.Following the 1867 season, Catto, with support from players from the white Athletic Base Ball Club, applied for the Pythians' admission into the newly formed Pennsylvania Base Ball Association. As it became clear that they would lose any vote by the Association, they withdrew their application. In 1869, the Pythians challenged various white baseball teams in Philadelphia to games. The Olympic Ball Club accepted the challenge. The first match game between black and white baseball teams took place on September 4, 1869, ending in the Pythians' defeat, 44 to 23.
Activist for equal rights
The Civil War increased Catto's activism for abolition and equal rights. He joined with Frederick Douglass and other black leaders to form a Recruitment Committee to sign up black men to fight for the Union and emancipation. After the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863, Catto helped raise a company of black volunteers for the state's defense; their help, however, was refused by the staff of Major General Darius N. Couch on the grounds that the men were not authorized to fight. Acting with Douglass and the Union League, Catto helped raise eleven regiments of United States Colored Troops in the Philadelphia area. These men were sent to the front and many saw action. Catto was commissioned as a major in the army but never saw action.On Friday, April 21, 1865, at the State House in Philadelphia, Catto presented the regimental flag to Lieutenant Colonel Trippe, commander of the 24th United States Colored Troops. An account of Catto's presentation speech was reported the following day in the Christian Recorder:
In November 1864, Catto was elected to be the Corresponding Secretary of the Pennsylvania Equal Rights League. He also served as Vice President of the State Convention of Colored People held in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in February 1865..
Catto fought for the desegregation of Philadelphia's trolley car system, along with his fiancée Caroline LeCount and abolitionist William Still. The May 18, 1865, issue of the New York Times ran a story discussing the civil disobedience tactics employed by Catto as he fought for civil rights:
A meeting of the Union League of Philadelphia was held in Sansom Street Hall on Thursday, June 21, 1866, to protest and denounce the forcible ejection of several black women from Philadelphia's street cars. At this meeting, Catto presented the following resolutions:
Later enlisting the help of Congressmen Thaddeus Stevens and William D. Kelley, Catto was instrumental in the passage of a Pennsylvania bill that prohibited segregation on transit systems in the state. Publicity about a conductor's being fined who refused to admit Catto's fiancée to a Philadelphia streetcar helped establish the new law in practice.
Catto's crusade for equal rights was capped in March 1869, when Pennsylvania voted to ratify the 15th Amendment, which prohibited discrimination against citizens in registration and voting based on race, color or prior condition; effectively, it provided suffrage to black men. It was fully ratified in 1870.
Following the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, Black political organizing in Philadelphia expanded rapidly. Octavius Catto was a leading figure in this movement through his work with the Pennsylvania Equal Rights League, which coordinated Black civil rights advocacy, voter education, and political mobilization across the state. In April 1870, Catto and other PERL leaders helped organize a massive Fifteenth Amendment celebration parade in Philadelphia, in which thousands of Black men marched by ward. Contemporary reporting and later historical analysis describe the parade as a deliberate demonstration of electoral readiness and political discipline, signaling that newly enfranchised Black voters would have a decisive impact on upcoming elections, including the 1871 mayoral race.
Assassination
By 1871, Black voters in Philadelphia overwhelmingly supported the Republican Party, threatening the control of the city’s Democratic political machine. The Democratic administration of Mayor Daniel M. Fox, working through ward organizations, responded with systematic efforts to suppress the Black vote. In the Fourth Ward, political power was controlled by Alderman William “Bull” McMullen, whose organization relied on patronage, police loyalty, and street violence to maintain electoral dominance. Historical research and trial records show that McMullen’s organization coordinated Election Day violence using both uniformed police officers and civilian enforcers.On Election Day, October 10, 1871, McMullen’s Fourth Ward organization initiated a campaign of racially targeted political violence intended to intimidate Black voters and disrupt polling. Police officers aligned with the Fourth Ward machine illegally separated Black and white voters at polling places, assaulted Black men attempting to vote, and either participated in or enabled armed attacks in surrounding neighborhoods. The violence spread beyond the Fourth Ward into adjacent Black communities.
In the hours preceding Catto’s death, multiple Black men were shot or killed within the same area of the city. Within a two-block radius of the site where Catto was later attacked, Jacob Gordon, Levi Bolden, Moses Wright, and Isaac Chase were violently assaulted or killed between the night before and the afternoon of Election Day. Armed groups moved through Black residential streets, breaking into homes, attacking residents, and forcing the closure of polling places.
According to witness testimony and trial evidence, Frank Kelly, a Democratic partisan operating within McMullen’s Fourth Ward organization, recognized Catto on South Street between Eighth and Ninth Streets. Kelly had already participated in violent attacks earlier that day, including the fatal assault on Isaac Chase. After recognizing Catto, Kelly confronted and shot him multiple times.
Catto did not die immediately. Police testimony indicates that after the first shot, Catto sought protection from nearby officers and requested their assistance. Kelly fired additional shots moments later, resulting in fatal wounds. Kelly fled the scene. He was able to escape Philadelphia and lived for 7 years in Chicago. He was recognized and apprehended, tried, and acquitted. No police officers or political officials were convicted for their roles in the Election Day violence.
Catto's military funeral at Lebanon Cemetery in Passyunk was well-attended. Later, after the cemetery was closed down, Catto's remains were reinterred at Eden Cemetery, in Collingdale, Pennsylvania.