Octavius V. Catto

Octavius V. Catto was a tireless activist who gave his life in the struggle to secure civil liberties for African Americans. The freeborn son of a clergyman, Catto was raised in Philadelphia and educated at the Colored Youth Institute, where he later served on the faculty. Committed to African American advancement, Catto founded major civic institutions in Philadelphia, including the Banneker Literary Institute, the Equal Rights League, and the Pythian Baseball Club—one of the earliest black baseball teams. During the Civil War, he allied himself with antislavery Republicans and worked with Frederick Douglass to recruit black regiments. A vigorous advocate for the civil rights amendments of the Reconstruction era, Catto was brutally shot to death by a Democratic Party operative on October 10, 1871, as blacks voted in the first Philadelphia election held after ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment.