The career of Octavius Catto ranks among the great stories of the United States in the 1800s. This versatile figure came to prominence during and after the Civil War. This was a time of dramatic change in America.

Octavius Catto is a second-generation figure in the struggle of African Americans for equality in the United States. People like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman were the first generation. They were major figures right before the Civil War and did much to publicize the injustice of slavery to a morally ambivalent White America. Leaders like Octavius Catto were the next generation in this struggle. After the Civil War they took up the march begun by Douglass and Tubman.

Catto was born in South Carolina to a free mother and a slave who earned his freedom. But the family moved to Philadelphia when threatened with arrest for anti-slavery activities. In 1854 Catto went to the Institute for Colored Youth (ICY). This later became Cheyney University, the first historically Black college in the US. By 1859 Catto was a teacher at ICY, teaching English, mathematics, Greek, and Latin. (Did I mention he was versatile?)

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Military & Political Career of Octavius Catto

By 1859 the Civil War loomed, and Catto believed that African Americans should volunteer to fight. Both because (after 1863) victory would help end slavery and to help African Americans establish their claim to equal citizenship. In 1863, when the Confederate attack at Gettysburg was imminent, Catto raised colored troops to fight. But they were refused for being Black. Undaunted, Catto eventually raised eleven regiments of colored troops for the Union war effort. He gained the rank of major before the war ended.

After 1865 Catto was a major figure leading for passage of amendments 13, 14, and 15. He joined a number of civic organizations in Pennsylvania. But an important moment came in 1865 when he acted in civil disobedience. In an eerie precursor to what happened to Rosa Parks in 1954, Philadelphia segregated its street cars. Catto protested this injustice. With the help of the noted politician Thaddeus Stevens, he got state laws in place to end the practice.

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The Baseball Career of Octavius Catto

This is how I learned Catto’s story. He was also a skilled athlete and infielder for Philadelphia’s Pythian Base Ball Club. (In an interesting parallel, Frederick Douglass’s son played baseball, too. Frederick Jr. was a member of the Alerts Base Ball Club in Washington, D.C.) He tried to gain admittance into the National Association of Base Ball Players for the 1868 season. The Association denied the Pythians entry, however. It stated dubiously, “If colored clubs were admitted there would be, in all probability, some division of feeling, whereas by excluding them no injury would result to anyone.”

This sound a little too familiar, doesn’t it? It echoes “leaders” of the present who want citizens to forget or ignore civil rights in the name of healing divisions among Whites. This repeats what happened in 1870s America. Many northern leaders wanted to patch the country back together. Sadly, they proved ready to sacrifice equal rights for Blacks in the name of reconciling the White citizens of the South. Sticking up too much for equal treatment of African Americans seemed too divisive. So, baseball adopted a policy of segregation so that White clubs nationwide could organize and promote the game. Soon, the contributions of Black soldiers to victory in the Civil War (over 200,000 joined Union armies) was forgotten. Jim Crow and voter suppression followed to promote White solidarity. Like I said, this sounds familiar.

Knowing this, Catto didn’t stop there. The Pythian Club recruited a number of quality players and eventually challenged White teams to games. Their 1869 matchup against the Olympic Club of Philadelphia is the first known such interracial contest. It drew 5,000 spectators and some national news coverage. The Pythian Club had a long career for its time. In 1887 it was one member of the short-lived National Colored Base Ball League.

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His Death and Memory

Octavius Catto was murdered on October 10, 1871, in Philadelphia. He was trying to organize African Americans to vote in the mayoral election when murdered, one of ten Blacks murdered that day. His killer was not tried until seven years later. He was acquitted by an all-white jury despite eyewitness testimony of those who saw the murder.

For the next several decades, Catto’s name graced a number of buildings and institutions in African American communities around the nation. But even this ceased by the early twentieth century when the accommodationist policies of Booker T. Washington gained favor in national circles.

It was a moment of justice, therefore, when Philadelphia erected a statue of Catto in 2017 near its City Hall. Philadelphia has about 1,700 public statues. Catto’s is the first of a specific African American.

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