Octavius
Valentine Catto was born of mixed-race parents in slave-holding South Carolina.
His mother, Sarah Isabella Cain, was a free woman from the prominent mixed race
DeReef family; since one’s status at birth came from one’s mother, Octavius was
born free. His father, William T. Catto, was a freed slave who had become a
Presbyterian minister.
William
Catto moved the family out of Charleston, South Carolina, to Philadelphia, a
city that had long been opposed to slavery and where free blacks had far more
opportunities than they had in the South.
Education
Octavius
began his education in segregated schools in Philadelphia, though he spent some
time in the otherwise all-white Allentown Academy in Allentown, N.J. In 1854, he
returned to Philadelphia, where he attended the Institute for Colored Youth
(ICY) run by the Quakers (later renamed Cheyney University), the country’s first
historically black institution of higher education. The ICY had been founded as
a trade school but had changed its curriculum to liberal arts and classics by
the time Catto arrived. Catto graduated from the ICY in 1858, then spent a year
in advanced studies under a black scholar in Washington, D.C. He returned to
Philadelphia in 1859, where he was appointed as a teacher of English and
mathematics at the ICY by its principal, Ebenezer Bassett, an African-American
graduate of Yale and future ambassador to Haiti.
Along
with teaching at the ICY, Catto was involved in the Banneker Institute, an
African-American scholarly organization. He was also elected to the Franklin
Institute of Science, over the strenuous opposition of a significant percentage
of its white members.
During
this period Catto also became an activist on racial issues. He argued against
the common practice of appointing incompetent or racist white teachers to black
schools and pointed out the difficulties that even highly qualified blacks had
in finding jobs. He also began agitating for abolition of slavery and for voting
rights for blacks, the latter a cause that he would continue to champion—and
that would eventually lead to his murder.
The Civil War and Activism
When
the Civil War broke out, Catto saw an opportunity to work for the end of slavery
and expanded rights for black citizens. He went to Washington, DC, and got
involved in the inner circles of the Republican Party to push for abolition. He
also realized that black contributions to the war effort could build support for
equal rights. He raised a volunteer regiment of black soldiers led by white
officers, but the army rejected the unit since blacks were not authorized to
fight. Edward Stanton, the Secretary of War, would overrule the army on this
point, but by the time that happened the regiment had dispersed back to their
homes.
Nonetheless,
a clear decision had been made that would allow Catto and others to raise troops
for the Union cause. He teamed up with Frederick Douglass to raise up 11 black
regiments from the Philadelphia area that saw action in the war. Catto himself
was given the rank of major, though he never saw combat.
Catto
became increasingly committed to the Republican Party during the war as the only
hope for blacks to gain equal rights. He joined the Pennsylvania Equal Rights
League, a Republican organization dedicated to getting blacks the right to vote.
In 1864, he met with black leaders from around the country in Syracuse, New
York, for the National Convention of Colored Men. The Convention formed the
National Equal Rights League, an organization dedicated to promoting racial
equality in the United States. Frederick Douglass was elected as the
organization’s first president.
Catto’s
troops trained outside Philadelphia, but in areas serviced by the city’s
horse-drawn trolleys. Unfortunately, the trolleys refused to carry black
passengers, and so the soldiers’ families were unable to visit them. Further,
black women and children were often kicked off the trolleys by conductors and
white passengers in all kinds of weather. Catto was determined to see this end,
and was willing to use civil disobedience to achieve his ends. Breakpoint.
Octavius Valentine Catto (1839-1871)
Harry
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