Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Coulson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Long before Rosa Parks, Octavius Valentine Cato refused to leave his seat on a segregated Philly trolley. Cat is a lesser known but no less important part Of the American story. He was born in 1839 in South Carolina to a free woman of mixed race from the prominent DeRee family.
His father was a freed slave and Presbyterian minister. Cato's education began in segregated schools in Philadelphia, and he eventually attended the nation's first black college and became a teacher. Catto argued against the common practice of appointing, quote, incompetent or racist white teachers to black schools. He raised awareness of the difficulties that even highly qualified black teachers faced in finding jobs. Eventually, he would join the National Equal Rights League, agitating for the abolition of slavery and for voting rights for blacks, a cause that would eventually lead to his murder.
During the Civil War, Cato became involved in the inner circles of the Republican Party in Washington, D.C. He realized that black contributions to the war effort could build support for equal rights.
so he raised a volunteer regiment of black soldiers, but the army rejected them. Eventually the Secretary of War Edward Stanton would overrule the Army, allowing Cato and his friend Frederick Douglass to form eleven black regiments from the Philadelphia area. Cato's troops trained in areas where trolleys refused to carry black passengers. On May 17th, 1865, the New York Times reported. on the following incident.
Last evening a colored man got into a Pine Street passenger car and refused all entreaties to leave the car, where his presence appeared to not be desired. The conductor of the car ran the car off the track, detached the horses, and left the colored man to occupy the car all by himself. The colored man still firmly maintains his position in the car, having spent the whole night there. The matter creates quite a sensation in the neighborhood where the car is standing, and crowds of sympathizers flock around the colored man.
Well the man was Octavius Valentine Cato. His resistance also included proposing a series of resolutions denouncing the treatment of blacks on the trolleys and calling on whites to stand up for blacks as part of their Christian duty. One of his resolutions read as follows, quote, That while men and women of a Christian community can sit unmoved and in silence, and see women barbarously thrown from the cars, and while our courts of justice fail to grant us redress for acts committed in violation of the chartered privileges of these railroad companies, we shall never rest at ease. Until these inviguous and unjust usages shall have ceased, end quote. Cato then worked with two U.S.
senators to pass a bill in Pennsylvania that prohibited discrimination in transportation. The parallels between what Catto accomplished in Philadelphia and what Rosa Parks would do in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama are quite striking. Both efforts set in motion national change. Along with his academic political, legal, and military work, Cato was also an athlete. He co-founded the Pythian Baseball Club and promoted baseball in the black community.
Partly because of his efforts, Philadelphia emerged as a major center for Negro League Baseball. In addition to challenging as many white teams as they could to games, in 1869, they played the Olympic Ball Club in what was the first formal baseball game with teams from different races. Cato continued to fight for equal rights, especially voting rights. The 15th Amendment, giving blacks the right to vote, was proposed in 1869 and passed in 1870. Catto traveled throughout Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania, educating blacks about what the amendment would mean for them. But the prospect of large numbers of black voters in Pennsylvania threatened the political status quo, especially for Irish immigrants who were mostly Democrats. Already competing with blacks for housing and jobs, they now feared their political power was in jeopardy. In Cato's very own precinct, the passing of the amendment could have switched the balance of power away from Democrats to the Republicans. And that led to large-scale voter intimidation.
violence and riots. Most of the police were Irish and so refused to protect blacks or allow them to vote. Catto was on his way to the polls when Frank Kelly, an associate of the local Democratic Party boss, recognized him. He shot Cato in the back three times, including one time through the heart. He was pronounced dead at the police station.
Cato was given a military funeral, the largest funeral Philadelphia had ever seen. Despite six witnesses who identified Kelly as the gunman, the jury, comprised entirely of working class whites, acquitted him. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored with Dr. Glenn Sunshine.
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