This episode is about a truly great American: a teacher, a soldier, a sportsman, and a civil rights advocate. But before we can talk about him, we’re going to have to talk about his father.

William Thomas Catto was born in Charleston, South Carolina during the Antebellum period. He was black. Though William’s mother had been enslaved, freed, and then illegally enslaved again, he himself had been born free and he made the most of it. Or at least, as much as a free black man in the Deep South could make of it back then. He worked as a millwright, and was active in his local Presbyterian church.

In 1833 William married Sarah Isabella Cain. William and Sarah had four children who survived to adulthood: oldest daughter Catharine in 1835, oldest son William in 1837, Octavius in 1839, and Frances in 1845. Sarah died shortly after Frances’s birth, though William Sr. quickly remarried to Mary B. Anderson and had several more children.

At some point, William Catto became frustrated by the limited economic and social opportunities available to him in Charleston. He thought the church might be able to expand his horizons. With the help of a friendly minister, the Reverend Thomas Smyth, William learned how to read and write and study the Bible. (This was no small thing; back then teaching blacks how to read and write was a crime. Smyth did it anyway.)

After a a year or two of studying with Smyth, Catto approached the Presbyterians and put himself forward as a candidate for missionary work, arguing that a black man could more effectively spread the word of Christ to the wider African diaspora. The Presbyterians were intrigued, and sent Catto to a divinity school in Columbia for a crash course of Bible study.

William’s tutors were impressed that a black man was able to keep up with their instruction. Don’t get me wrong, they were still super-racist and didn’t think he was as half as good as any of their white students, but they also figured that was good enough for black folks. They assigned William to a mission going to Nanna Kroo in the newly-founded country of Liberia. In 1848 the Cattos traveled to Baltimore so they could sail to Africa.

Their departure wound up being delayed multiple times, which wound up creating a problem. The more the Cattos experienced life outside the Deep South the more they liked it. Eventually William decided he did not want to be a missionary, and began denouncing the colonization movement as a ruse to deport free blacks so that their very existence would stop giving enslaved blacks ideas above their station, the better to “hold our brethren the more quietly and safely in chains.”

Well, the Presbyterians did not like that. They revoked William’s license to preach and then tried to have him arrested for inciting a slave revolt. The Cattos fled to Philadelphia, only hours ahead of the marshals who had been sent to arrest them.

If you were an African-American in 1848, Pennsylvania was the place to be. The Commonwealth had formally abolished slavery in 1780 and consequently had more black residents than any other state in the North, most of them in Philadelphia. Some had done quite well for themselves, creating the foundation for a solid black middle class. There were eighteen black churches, several black newspapers, a couple of black cemeteries, and more black social clubs than you could shake a stick at.

It wasn’t all sunshine and roses. African-Americans may have been free, but that was about it. Most of them lived in dire poverty. Racism was rampant, race riots were frequent, and those who incited them were rarely punished. The Commonwealth made voting a whites-only affair in 1838 and continued to push explicitly racist policies, including the re-segregation of Philadelphia’s schools throughout the 1850s.

So no, it wasn’t great, but it was still a hell of a lot better than South Carolina or Maryland, and the Cattos were determined to make it their new home. William Catto soon became one of the city’s most popular black preachers, and developed a circuit that took him up and down the Delaware Valley.

Let’s shift focus to our actual subject, William’s third child, Octavius Valentine Catto.

At this point in our story Octavius is nine years old. Most of that childhood has been spent in the Deep South. During that time he has watched his father pull himself up from a illiterate millwright to a respected preacher, and do battle with the white power structure. Now he is living and in the relative freedom of the North, and it is his time to shine.

The problem with Octavius Catto is that there’s just too much to talk about. He was a true Renaissance man, and you could probably milk each and every aspect of his life for an entire episode. That’s a good problem to have, but I don’t want to spend the next four months talking about him. So instead we’re going to examining his life in little, discrete, siloed chunks. It’s a bit of a departure from our usual strict chronological approach, but I think it’s the best way to create a picture of the whole man without letting that picture get cluttered.

Let’s get started.

Scholar

The Reverend Catto was determined that his children would have every opportunity that had not been available to him. If nothing else, that meant they would be getting the best education he could extract from Philadelphia’s segregating public schools.

For a few years Octavius was sent to the Vaux Primary School, which wasn’t much. For starters, it was held in a nearby church which meant that it could not have class whenever there were services. And it turns out there were a lot of funeral services. Later he transferred to the Quaker-run Lombard Grammar School, which practiced the “monitorial system” (where advanced students are supposed to help teach those who have fallen behind).

Soon the reverend started thinking that these segregated schools were not good enough for his children. In 1853 he sent his son to an otherwise all-white boarding school in Allentown, New Jersey. Octavius seems to have learned a lot there, while at the same time being completely miserable.

The 15-year-old Octavius was much happier the following year, when he returned to Philadelphia to enroll in the city’s finest black school, the Institute for Colored Youth. The Institute had been founded by Quakers in 1842 as a vocational farm school, but at the suggestion of community leaders it had recently shifted to a more classical style of education. The new Institute was deliberately modeled after elite white schools, like Central High School.

The Quakers hired Charles L. Reason, a Haitian-born professor of mathematics, and put him in charge of implementing a challenging curriculum and unforgiving tests. Students’ grades were published in the local paper for everyone to see, and about half of them failed every year. In the first few years of its existence the Institute handed out precious few diplomas. This wasn’t just pointless cruelty. The Institute’s goal was not merely to provide an education, but to forge the next generation of black leaders and teachers. It couldn’t afford to have lax standards.

Octavius flourished in this highly competitive environment, especially when Reason was replaced by Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett, another incredible black intellectual who had somehow managed to take graduate courses at Yale. Bassett took a liking to the young Octavius and coddled him just a little bit. It didn’t hurt that Octavius was totally a teacher’s pet.

He made several good friends among the other students. Most notable of these was upperclassman Jacob C. White, the son a barber who had made a small fortune investing in real estate. The 17-year-old White was one of the Institute’s star pupils, and had recently founded the Banneker Institute, a literary society where Philadelphia’s black intellectuals met and discussed the issues of the day. (Octavius, though, was not allowed to join due to his extreme youth.)

(Jacob White is going to be an ongoing presence in our story, because he and Octavius Catto were thick as thieves. Just take it as a given that even if I’m not explicitly mentioning his name, he’s around somewhere helping his best friend get things done.)

In 1858 Octavius was the valedictorian of the Institute’s third-ever graduating class. (A few years later, he would also become the first president of the Institute’s alumni association.) To celebrate his graduation, he immediately reapplied to the Banneker Institute, and this time he was accepted. Then he moved to Washington, DC to spend a year studying Latin and Greek.

When he returned to Philadelphia in 1859, Octavius Valentine Catto had grown into a handsome, well-groomed, intelligent, and respectable young man. The only thing stopping him from being the city’s most eligible black bachelor was that his friend Jacob was still on the market. Catto could have done anything.

What he wanted to do was teach.

The Institute for Colored Youth immediately hired him to teach math and English, for a salary of $150/year.

Thoughtful, eloquent, and inspiring, he soon became one of the Institute’s most popular teachers. Mind you, he was also known for his quick temper. He did not suffer fools gladly and wasn’t shy about doling out physical punishments. The impression I get was that he was less Edward James Olmos as Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver, and more Morgan Freeman as Joe Clark in Lean on Me. (Forgive the forty-year-old movie references, in case you haven’t caught on, I am an old.)

Being popular with students doesn’t guarantee that you’re popular with the administrators, though, and that was the case here. The Quakers who ran the Institute for Colored Youth liked Octavius and the prestige his extracurricular activities (which we’ll get to in a moment) brought to the Institute. On the other hand, they didn’t always like his politics which they considered militant. That doesn’t mean that he was advocating for violent revolution. No, in 1860s speak “militant” meant that he was willing to fight for his rights rather than just sit back, write polite letters, and meekly accept whatever the white power structure was willing to hand him.

(Also, the Quakers were super-cheap.)

The first cracks in their relationship really showed in 1862, when Catto was offered a job in Brooklyn. The Quakers agreed to give him a $100 raise if he would stay, but it took months of negotiation to get to that point.

In 1868 Don Carlos Basset retired as principal to become the United States Ambassador to Haiti, and Catto put himself forward as the ideal candidate to replace him. The Quakers desperately wanted to keep Catto around and happy, but did not want to put him in a position of actual power because they feared he would use it as a platform for his militant activism. They struggled to find a way to keep him around without actually conceding much to him. They eventually gave the job to the highly qualified Fanny Jackson Coppin, but mollified Catto by raising his salary to $800/year, making him one of highest paid teachers in the commonwealth, black or white.

That wasn’t enough for Catto, and he kept his options open. In 1870 he was offered a job to be the superintendent of Washington, DC’s colored school system, which was being built from the ground up. It was an amazing opportunity and he really wanted to take it… but the Quakers who ran the Institute would not let him out of his contract.

Catto found a way out by becoming a part-time consultant. During the Institute’s summer break he would head down to the capitol, spend a few months doing a year’s worth of planning and strategizing, and then return to Philadelphia in the fall for the start of the new school year. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it because it allowed him to network with the African-American intellectuals and Republican politicians of the nation’s capital. His work was greatly appreciated, and he was toasted as “the pride of his race in his city.”

They loved him in Philadelphia, too. How much? Well in 1870, Catto became the first black member of the Franklin Institute. Okay, membership was mostly a matter of paying dues, but it was still one of the most respected scientific institutions in the country and Catto’s membership was not uncontroversial. Chemist B. Howard Rand, who was set to lecture on mineralogy, threatened to cancel if the Institute did not immediately re-segregate itself. To its credit, the Franklin Institute told him to pound sand, and Catto stayed.

Soldier

We’ve looked at one facet of Octavius Catto’s life, his accomplishments as a scholar and educator. Now let’s consider another aspect of the whole.

In June 1863, Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Mason-Dixon Line and invaded the Union. Pennsylvania governor Andrew Curtain and Philadelphia mayor Alexander Henry decided now was the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country and asked the people of the commonwealth to form temporary militia units to serve for the duration of the present emergency.

Their appeal was rather pointedly not limited to the state’s white residents. They couldn’t afford to be picky and, well, the freedom of an entire race was on the line. Philadelphia’s black residents responded in droves, perhaps thinking of Frederick Douglass’s famous exhortation…

Get an eagle on your button and a musket on your shoulder by the speediest means, at any cost, and when you have Uncle Sam’s uniform on your back all the devils in Jeff Davis’ dominions cannot keep you out of citizenship…

Among those who answered the call were the students, alumni, and faculty of the Institute for Colored Youth. They formed an all-black militia, some ninety men strong, and volunteered for service. As we will see over and over again, Catto was the one leading the charge and was chosen by the others to be their commander.

On June 17, Catto’s group mustered in Independence Square, where they were sworn into service. Then they marched up Broad Street to the city arsenal to pick up a few rifles, and then it was off to the train station to catch an express to Harrisburg. At every step of their journey the city’s black community turned up to cheer them on.

When they arrived at Camp Curtis, though, they were turned away by Major General Darius Couch.

Couch’s justification was that Congress had set a rule requiring black volunteers to enlist for a period of at least three years, and therefore he could not temporarily deputize an all-black militia unit. It was three years or nothing.

The rule was racist — white folks were only required to enlist for a single year — but even if it wasn’t, Couch was deliberately misinterpreting it. The restriction was supposed to apply to troops enlisting in the regular army, not citizen militias responding to an emergency summons. When Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton heard what had happened, he immediately wrote to Couch telling him to stop being a dick and accept the black militia unit.

Stanton was too late, though. Catto’s group had already returned to Philadelphia and disbanded.

Congress and the Army found the incident highly embarrassing. They realized that they would have to do some damage control. A few days after the Battle of Gettysburg, the Union League held a big rally at National Hall, co-hosted by Catto and White, and featuring a lineup of speakers including Frederick Douglass, Congressman William D. Kelley, and Major George Sterns (who had helped recruit the Massachusetts 54th Regiment from Glory, while we’re referencing old Morgan Freeman movies). The whole purpose of the rally was to reassure the African-American community that this had been a one-time mistake, and their contributions would still be valued.

Afterward, the army put Major Sterns in charge of recruiting free blacks nationwide. To aid his local efforts, he turned to Catto and White, who crafted a powerful message and plastered it all over the city on broadsheets and posters. It’s too long for me to read the whole thing, so here’s a brief excerpt…

Men of Color, To Arms! Now or Never!

This is our Golden Moment… A new era is open to us. For generations we have suffered under the horrors of slavery, outrage and wrong; our manhood has been denied, our citizenship blotted out, our souls seared and burned, our spirits cowed and crushed, and the hopes of the future of our race involved in doubts and darkness. But now the whole aspect of our relations to the white race is changed. Now therefore is our most precious moment. Let us Rush to Arms! Fail Now and Our Race is Doomed on this the soil of our birth….

MEN OF COLOR! All Races of Men – the Englishmen, the Irishmen, the Frenchmen, the German, the American, have been called to assert their claim to freedom and a manly character, by an appeal to the sword… We can now see that OUR LAST OPPORTUNITY HAS COME!…

MEN OF COLOR! BROTHERS AND FATHERS! WE APPEAL TO YOU! By all your concern for yourselves and your liberties, by all your regard for God and Humanity, by all your desire for Citizenship and Equality before the law, by all your love for the Country, to stop at no subterfuges, listen to nothing that shall deter you from rallying for the Army. Come forward, and at once Enroll your Names for the Three Years’ Service. STRIKE NOW, and you are henceforth and forever FREEMEN!

Thanks to the work of Sterns, Catto, and their carefully crafted pitch, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania contributed more African-American troops to the Union cause than any other state. By a huge margin. No other state was even close.

As for Catto himself, he joined his local Pennsylvania National Guard Unit. He never saw combat, but rose to the rank of major and was eventually appointed inspector of the Fifth Brigade. He served not only for the duration, but for for years after the war.

Civil Rights Advocate

It would be wrong to think of Catto as merely an educator or a soldier. He considered himself an activist, working to reshape the world into a more just and equitable one. Teaching and soldiering were only two of the ways he tried to create that change.

Catto’s work with the Institute for Colored Youth and the Banneker Institute and the National Guard and the Local Republican Party were all part of that great work. His personal charm and wisdom made him a respected community leader whose counsels were valued by people of all races.

One of Catto’s earliest forays into civil rights advocacy was a massive rally that he, White, and the Banneker Institute organized at National Hall on July 4, 1859. It was a bold move for a few reasons: black folks didn’t think much of Independence Day, because the Declaration’s promise of equal rights for all seemed hollow to them; and white folks didn’t think much of abolitionist rallies, and had an unfortunate habit of attacking them. Less than two decades earlier a very similar rally had triggered days of racist rioting that set the city ablaze and led the commonwealth to strip black men of their voting rights.

This time, though, it went off without a hitch. Black and white speakers reminded people of the noble promises of the Declaration of Independence, pushed for abolition, and called for open resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act. No one tried to burn the hall down. It was a hopeful sign that things were changing.

There’s a limit, though, to how much change the average person will accept. A few years later as the Civil War was winding down it became clear that while most Northern whites tepidly supported abolition they were less enthusiastic about equal rights. Even Radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens were warning their black allies that most Republicans would not move on racial equality unless it was politically expedient for them to do so.

Civil rights activists like Catto realized that their job was far from over, and began to organize accordingly.

In October 1864 he attended the National Convention of Colored Men in Syracuse, where the country’s most prominent African-American intellectuals and community leaders debated how to implement their agenda.

The following month Catto was one of Philadelphia’s delegates to the founding convention of the Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League. Not only that, he helped cool heads when a controversy on education threatened to tear the convention apart.

Representative James J. Wright of Wilkes-Barre had suggested that the league should advocate for African-American children to have African-American teachers. His belief was that students and teachers from the same community would have a unique bond born of their common struggle. Other representatives objected to that idea on ethical principles, claiming it was exactly the sort of raced-based discrimination they were trying to stamp out. The debate became heated and threatened to overtake the entire convention.

It was Catto who stepped in to cool tempers by rephrasing the argument in a way that acknowledged the merit of Wright’s idea without making it seem discriminatory. His revised wording of the proposal was…

In the appointment of teachers for these schools, colored persons, their literary qualifications being sufficient, should receive the preference, not by reason of their complection [sic], but because they are better qualified by conventional circumstances outside of the school house.

In other words, always go with the best teacher, but when two teachers are otherwise equal, a black teacher should be preferred to a white teacher due to the intangibles that they brought to the table. Who could argue with a common-sense argument like that? Especially when it came from one of the state’s leading educators. Catto’s amended resolution passed unanimously, and he was elected one of the Equal Rights League’s corresponding secretaries.

Then he celebrated by desegregating Philadelphia’s streetcars.

Now, when I say “streetcars” odds are you’re almost certainly thinking of some sort of urban light rail, but we’re far too early for that. In this time period streetcars were just horse-drawn carriages (though some of them were on rails). They were more like buses.

Philadelphia’s streetcars were segregated. Not legally or formally, mind you. White people just did not want to sit next to black people for the usual racist reasons — you know, “they smell funny” or “they’re low class” or “they’re all violent rapists.” The streetcar companies figured the easiest way to stop that from happening was to refuse all black passengers.

African-Americans had protested against this for years, to no avail. It didn’t matter if you were a day laborer or a teacher or a preacher or a war hero like Captain Robert Smalls or goddamn Frederick Douglas. The message from streetcar conductors was always the same: “We don’t allow n****** to ride.”

The seeds of change were planted by a near-tragedy. In July 1864 the Reverend William Alston was walking with his two-year-old son when the boy suddenly stopped breathing. The Reverend Alston panicked and tried to board a nearby streetcar with the unconscious child, so he could rush to the nearest doctor. The conductor refused to let him board, even though the streetcar was completely empty.

Reverend Allston’s son recovered, but the Reverend was angry enough to dash off a letter to the Philadelphia Press…

I was born and raised in the South, and have traveled over a large part of the United States, and here, I must confess, that never before have I met with a barbarity so satanical and heathenish in its character… Is it human to exclude respectable colored citizens from your street cars when so many of our brave and vigorous young men have been and are enlisting to take part in this heavenly ordained slavery extermination?

This was the final straw. In January 1865 Catto and several other civil rights leaders held a public meeting to talk about what could be done. Up to this point the white press had simply ignored previous attempts to desegregate the streetcar system; this time Catto made sure it couldn’t, by taking out paid notices in every newspaper.

The streetcar companies quickly realized that this was not a good look for them, here in the final days of the Civil War. They released a mealy-mouthed statement claiming they had always been willing to serve “well-behaved” passengers regardless of color, but that they had to cater to the sensitivities of their white riders, and when polled, those white riders were just fine with the current system. Because of course they were.

This time, though, the activists were not willing to meekly accept those claims at face value. (This is where that “militancy” we mentioned earlier comes back into play.) The time for writing polite letters was over. It was time for some civil disobedience.

All over the city black activists boarded streetcars, or rather, attempted to board streetcars. Usually they were just kicked off. Sometimes they were savagely beaten by the conductors and passengers. Sometimes they were savagely beaten by gangs of thugs hired by the streetcar company for that express purpose. Sometimes those thugs were also the cops.

It was a long, uphill climb. White newspapers steadfastly ignored the protest. White grand juries refused to prosecute white passengers for assaulting black passengers. White ministers refused to condemn the violence. Even the older generation of black civil rights leaders refused to support the protest because they did not think it was sufficiently respectable.

There were small victories — a black nurse working in an army hospital was awarded $50 after she was kicked off a streetcar and beaten by the passengers — but they were few and far between.

Catto was also working another angle. If the public refused to act, if the white majority remained silently complicit in the violence and reprisals, changing the system from the ground up would be impossible. In that case, change would have to be imposed on the system from the top down. It had a certain appeal. After all, it’s hard to convince tens of thousands of people to abandon the social structures they have known for their entire lives. It would be a lot easier to change the minds of a few dozen Republican state senators who were 90% of the way there anyway.

State Senator Morrow Lowry of Erie was a staunch supporter of equal rights who had tried to integrate the state’s railways five years earlier. Catto and his group persuaded Lowry to revive his old bill and expand it to include streetcars as well as financial penalties for violations. The revised legislation was introduced on February 5, 1867 and the timing couldn’t have been better. Congress was debating the Fourteenth Amendment, and Republican state legislatures wanted to seem like they were being similarly proactive. The bill passed through both houses on a straight party-line vote and was signed into law on March 22.

Now Catto just needed to show that the new law had teeth. He already had the perfect test case in mind: Caroline LeCount. She was beautiful and brave and fearless, a respectable middle-class black woman, and a fellow teacher at the Institute for Colored Youth. And it was easy to convince her, because she was also the fiancée of one Octavius Valentine Catto.

On March 25 a white ally hailed a streetcar at the intersection of Ninth and Lombard. When it stopped he backed off and Caroline LeCount boarded. The conductor promptly kicked her off with the usual refrain of “We don’t allow n***** to ride.”

That had been expected. LeCount walked over to the office of the nearest magistrate and swore out a complaint against the streetcar conductor. The magistrate thought he was being clever when he told LeCount that his hands were tied; he had yet to receive formal notice of the law and did not think he could trust what he was reading in the newspapers.

This too, was expected. Two quick telegrams later and LeCount was back with a copy of the bill hot off the presses in Harrisburg. This time, the magistrate’s hands really were tied. The conductor was tracked down, arrested, and fined $100, the maximum penalty under the law.

Within a few weeks all the streetcar companies fell in line.

It was a joyous victory, and one hopes that Catto and LeCount savored it.

It was only going to get harder from there, because every hard-won civil rights victory was feeding into a national backlash. Northern whites did not like being reminded of their own racism. Republicans were suffering reverses at the local and national level as the public began to tire of the endless slog of Reconstruction. Politicians were proving that they were more than happy to abandon the cause of civil rights, if that cause was going to cost them elections.

Baseball Player

Octavius Catto’s passionate advocacy often took him to strange places outside the realm of politics and the law. One of those places was America’s game. (Yes, that’s right, this is a stealth Philadelphia baseball story. Cope with it.)

At this point baseball was well on its way to becoming America’s national pastime. During the Civil War soldiers taught each other the rules and played pick-up games in their downtime; after the war veterans brought the game back to their communities where it spread like wildfire. By the late 1860s Philadelphia had more than 300 baseball clubs.

African-Americans were playing baseball, too, because everyone was playing baseball. Black clubs sprung up all over the country: the Monitor Club of Jamaica, New York; the Bachelors Club of Albany; the Excelsior Base Ball Club of Philadelphia; the Mutual Base Ball Club of Washington; and the Unique Base Ball Club of Chicago. It’s a tribute to how popular baseball was that newspapers frequently covered the games of black teams they would have otherwise gladly ignored.

Mind you, the base ball of the era was not at all like the baseball of today. There were no professional athletes; players were strictly amateurs. The clubs themselves were community organizations, funding their operations via membership dues and donations. Teams would issue formal written challenges to each other, establishing the stakes for the game (usually a game ball or a commemorative pennant), and opening negotiations on where the game would be played, who the umpires would be, and so forth. A coin flip determined which team batted first. Ball fields had no real defined boundaries other than the baselines. The games themselves were frequently multi-day social affairs, with pre-game picnics and extravagant post-game parties where the players and their families and friends mingled with the out-of-towners to form friendships and exchange news.

On June 6, 1866 a new team was formed out of teachers and alumni of the Institute for Colored Youth and associates of the Banneker Institute. The founders read like a roll call of Philadelphia’s young black leaders. Col. J. Whipper Purnell, nephew of famed abolitionist William Whipper, was the club president. Raymond J. Burr, purportedly the grandson of Aaron Burr and one of his slaves, was the club’s vice-president. Jacob White was the club secretary. Octavius Valentine Catto was the team captain, and their star second baseman.

The team struggled to find a name at first. Originally it was just “The Institute” but that name seemed insular and limiting. Eventually it settled on “the Pythian Base Ball Club of Philadelphia” because most of its players were also members of the same fraternal organization, the Knights of Pythias.

The Pythians were funded purely by membership dues: an active membership for players cost $5, and a fan membership cost about $1. Those funds were used to pay for the team’s needs: uniform, equipment, facility rental, travel expenses, and so forth.

Finding a place to play was not always easy. Many of the city’s ballparks were in neighborhoods where African-Americans were not welcome. The Pythians often had to travel to Fairmount Park to find a friendly playing ground, and sometimes they even had to play in fields across the river in Camden. Through Catto’s charm and political connections the team eventually developed a working relationship with a local white club, the Philadelphia Athletics (no relation), run by the racially progressive publisher of the City Item, Col. Thomas Fitzgerald. The Athletics allowed the Pythians to use their facilities and their star player, Elias “Hicks” Hayhurst, often umpired Pythian games.

The Pythians played a handful of games in 1866, mostly against pick-up squads. They had only one real challenge: an impromptu October 3 game against the Bachelors of Albany, who were on a sort of road trip, one of the first ever for a black team. The Pythians did not look good in a 70-15 loss, but took some solace from the fact that their cross-town rivals, the Excelsiors, got crushed just as badly.

The Pythians started off the 1867 season by raiding the Excelsiors for talent, and landing pitcher John Cannon, “considered by whites a baseball wonder.” The rest of the team’s lineup included first baseman Jefferson Cavens, second baseman Octavius Catto, third basemen Joshua Adkins and Frank Jones, shortstop James Sparrow, and outfielder/catchers John Graham, Spencer Hanly, and Francis Jones.

They had their first game in June, a lopsided 62-7 victory over the local L’Overture club, with Catto and Cannon scoring eight runs each. A week later on June 28 they rubbed some salt in the Excelsiors’ wounds by defeating them 39-16.

On July 6 they faced off against the Alert Club of Washington, DC. This was the team’s first big social event; Frederick Douglass’s son Charles played third base for the Alerts, and papa came out to see his little boy play. He was probably not impressed. The game was interrupted several times by rain and was called halfway through the fifth inning. If you didn’t count that half-inning (and why would you) the Alerts won 21-18. If you did count it (and the Pythians did) the Pythians won 23-21. At least no one could argue about the extravagance of the after-game party, which included thirty pounds of ham, gallons of claret, boxes of cigars, and ice cream for everyone.

Their next game, against the Mutual Club of Washington, was a very close loss, 44-43, but was again somewhat tainted because the bored umpire began calling everything a strike to speed up the last few innings.

In August the Pythians traveled to Washington to sample the their guests’ hospitality. The rematch with the Alerts was another rainout, but this time the Pythians were on top, 52-43, when the game was called. The rematch with the Mutuals started off shaky, but the Pythians rallied and scored 19 runs in the 5th inning and 21 runs in the 7th to secure a 50-43 victory.

From there it was smooth sailing. They won road games in Baltimore and Camden. They defeated Aldrdige, 35-15; the Camden Resolutes 50-6; the Rouen Club 30-9; and the Harrisburg Monrovias 59-27 after scoring an astonishing 46 runs in the first four innings. It has somehow become part of baseball lore that the Pythians had a 9-1 season, but if you actually count things up correctly they played thirteen games in total, collecting 8 wins, 3 losses, and 2 games with unknown outcomes. Even with that corrected record the Pythians were clearly the best black baseball team in Philadelphia, if not the nation.

There was only one place to go from there: it was time to join the big leagues.

It has been suggested that this was Catto’s goal all along, that he had intended to use sports as a way to advance his social justice agenda by showing that black athletes and white athletes were equals. That may have been one of his secondary goals, but he seems to have viewed joining the big leagues as another networking opportunity. If games could be used to forge friendships and connections between black communities, why could they not be also used to forge friendships between black and white communities?

Urged on by their friends on the Athletics, the Pythians submitted an application to join the game’s premier organization: the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP). The National Association had been formed in 1857 by four New York clubs and had quickly grown to be the largest assembly of teams in the nation. In December 1867 their annual convention would be in Philadelphia, and it seemed like the perfect time to make a move.

There was one roadblock in the way. By 1867 there were too many teams for a national organization to handle directly, so the National Association restructured itself as a federation of state baseball associations. To reach the national convention, the Pythians would first have to deal with the Pennsylvania State Convention of Base Ball Players, held in Harrisburg on October 16 & 17.

The Pythians sent Raymond Burr to plead their case, figuring his distinguished pedigree might give him a leg up. It didn’t hurt that he also worked for John McKee, “the richest colored man in America,” and was intimately familiar with the sorts of wheeling and dealing that would be going on in the backrooms.

Before the meeting, Hicks Hayhurst took Burr around and introduced him to the other delegates. He picked up good vibes from convention president Judge Rose and secretary D.D. Domer, and bad vibes from everyone else.

On the morning of the first day the credentialing committee approved the applications of some 265 clubs, but for some reason did not mention the Pythians at all. During a recess Hayhurst and Domer approached Burr and told him that it did not look good, that too many of the delegates were not willing to play black teams. The convention’s officers were disappointed, but they were also worried about the optics. It wouldn’t look great if they rejected the only black application. They asked Burr to withdraw the Pythians, but he refused.

As session was about to be gaveled to an end, one delegate, a Mr. Rodgers from Philadelphia’s Bachelor Club, objected on the grounds that there was only one application remaining and that application deserved consideration. (Then, as now, you could always count on a Mr. Rodgers to do the right thing.) Hayhurst then motioned to defer the matter until the afternoon session, when it could be debated by the entire convention. The motion was approved.

During lunch many delegates approached Burr to give him their regrets. In his diary he wrote that he was disappointed by their lack of moral courage, writing that the delegates “openly said that they would in justice to the opinions of the clubs they represented be compelled, tho [sic] against their personal feelings, to vote against admission.”

Throughout the afternoon it became clear the convention organizers were delaying the vote on the Pythians until it was too late to do anything about it. Burr reluctantly withdrew the club’s application. He did not care a whit for the optics. What he did care about was avoiding an outright rejection, so the Pythians could still take their application directly to the National Association the following month.

Unfortunately for the Pythians, the National Association wasn’t any more welcoming. They wasted no time rejecting the team’s application, and then passed a resolution explicitly barring black teams and players. Their excuse was that they were just trying to stay out of the contentious politics of Reconstruction. As if refusing to admit black teams wasn’t already an overtly political and racist act. (You can insert that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quote about white moderates here.)

That was that. Baseball was officially segregated.

The Pythians weren’t going to let that slow them down. In 1868 they were better than ever. The club fielded four different squads, all outfitted in snazzy new uniforms. The traveling team, captained by Catto, managed to rack up six lopsided wins and one tie, averaging more than 39 runs a game while holding opposing teams to 21 runs or less.

They celebrated by making one more attempt to break baseball’s color barrier, by challenging the Philadelphia Athletics to play them in the “interracial world championship.”

On paper the Athletics were the perfect team to challenge. Unfortunately the challenge exposed deep divisions in the team — for every player who was all for racial equality on the ball field, there was another who worried that playing against a black team would get the Athletics expelled from the National Association. Arguments between the team owners got Col. Fitzgerald booted from the team’s ownership group. The challenge was ignored.

While all of this was going on, abolitionist William Still wrote to cancel his fan membership after a heated argument with Jacob White about the priorities of the younger generation of activists. His letter dripped with venom…

Our kin in the south famish for knowledge, have claims so great and pressing that I feel bound to give my means in this direction to the extent of my abilities in preference giving for frivolous amusement.

White gave as good as he got, though, noting that Still had never actually paid his membership dues, and therefore was resigning from a position he had never held.

…neither the acquisition nor the disposition of your means is of interest to us as an organization.

Fortunately the Pythians still had friends. Col. Fitzgerald may not have been in charge of the Athletics any more, but he was still the publisher of the City Item. Its sports pages began running letters calling the Athletics cowards for ducking the challenge.

According to the laws of our last Convention, no association game could be played between such clubs; but, in view of the fact that our most prominent clubs are now frequently playing sociable and friendly games, and in view also of the serviceable practice the Pythians may afford, I have no doubt that such a game would be interesting and well patronized. I learn that the Pythians are composed of the most worthy young men among our colored population. Who will put the ball in motion?

Why is it that the Athletics will not play the colored baseball club called the Pythians? Are they afraid of them? As I hear the Pythians are very strong. I think it is quite possible that the apprehension of being beaten by them is the real cause. Fie fie! I call on the Athletics Club to play the Pythians forthwith!

It’s not clear whether these really were letters from local fans itching for a dream match, or if they were written by Fitzgerald and Catto as a way of shaming the Athletics into action. If so, the ploy didn’t work.

Other local white teams wrote in to say they’d be happy to take on the Pythians. Several challengers were rejected outright for being too small. Others backed out when negotiations began to get serious, because in spite of their chest-puffery no one wanted to be the first white club to lose to an black team. Eventually, though, someone stepped up to the plate. The Olympic Base Ball Club may not have been the powerhouse the Athletics were, but they were a veritable institution, one of the first baseball teams in the nation.

A date was set, and on September 3, 1869 the Pythians and the Olympics met in the first recorded interracial game in baseball history.

It was a huge spectacle that drew some 4,000 fans, black, white, and otherwise — purportedly the largest crowd Philadelphia had ever seen for a baseball game.

Col. Fitzgerald was the only umpire, and he was behind home plate. That wasn’t unusual; the custom of the day was that fielders could call their own outs on the base paths. Usually that meant there would be mid-inning arguments between the teams that would have to be settled by the umpire. The Pythians, though, made a fateful decision to accept every call, apparently concerned the sight of a black man challenging white authority might cause the crowd to turn against them.

The Pythians won the coin flip and chose to bat second.

The first inning was slow, with the Olympics scoring one run and the Pythians scoring three. But the Olympics quickly figured out the Pythian’s pitching, and in the second inning scored eight runs to the Pythians two. They never looked back, and by the fourth inning the score was a lopsided 29-5. The large crowd started to become unruly, spilling over the ropes that marked the edge of the playing field, which made the next five innings a real slog that took three hours to play. The final score saw the Olympics on top, 44-23.

The sports pages of the City Item suggested that the Pythians’ politeness had doomed them, allowing the Olympics to get away with countless minor rules infractions that added up over time. The Philadelphia Inquirer was less partial, but had to admit that the Pythians “acquitted themselves in a very creditable manner, especially their outfielders, who made several very fine fly catches.”

A disappointing result, but the Pythians weren’t going to let that slow them down. Two weeks later, they played a game against an all-white team sponsored by the City Item. You might think, big deal, it’s just some company softball team, but that was not the case. The City Item had a 5-3 record against National Association clubs, and yet the Pythians still trounced them, 27-17.

It was the first win for an all-black team over an all-white team… and it wouldn’t be the last. A few weeks later they won a match against the Olive Club, 48-26. And then they had a rematch against the Olympics, and were slaughtered.

In the upcoming months and years there would be more interracial games in other cities. In October, the black Washington Alerts played the white Washington Olympics on the National Mall, but lost 56-4. More entertaining was an 1870 match in Boston between two clubs, both named the Resolutes, with the prize being that the winners could keep the name. (The black Resolutes won, 25-15.)

Interracial games never became the norm, though, and did not seem to be doing much to promote racial harmony and equal rights.

Politician

Other than the whole segregated baseball thing, 1870 was a thrilling time to be an African-American. On February 3 Congress ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, granting all black men the right to vote. Black communities around the country held parties and parades.

If you want to be cynical, the Republicans may have only ratified the amendment because they thought a surge of black voters would give them a massive advantage in the midterm elections. Black leaders were certainly happy to give them that impression. When Catto was feted at Philadelphia’s Union League on April 26, he thanked his hosts and told them “the black man knows on which side of the line to vote.”

Of course, thesis always produces antithesis. For everyone excited about African-Americans voting, there was someone who very much did not want them to vote. Democrats capitalized on this counter-movement, and they weren’t always nice about it. If black leaders were lucky they would just get threatening letters. If they were unlucky, political vigilantes would take potshots at them.

It would all come to a head on Election Day.

At this point in American history, elections were not exactly dignified affairs. Polling stations were fully partisan affairs run by the local bosses. Political operatives plied voters with drinks in an attempt to buy their votes. Actual fights between local factions were all but guaranteed, and you just had to hope that no one had thought to bring a knife, brickbat, or gun with them to the polls. Even if polling went off without a hitch, the vote tallies were often manipulated to get the right results.

The night before the election, black voters eager to make history began lining up outside their local polling stations. Democrats began to worry, and decided they needed to suppress the black vote any way they could.

In Philadelphia, Democratic thugs began hassling the city’s black voters, shoving the ones who were already in line out of the way so whites could vote first, and turning away newcomers with flimsy excuses about the lines being too long. Anyone who dared to complain to the cops got a beating for their trouble, because the thugs were also city policemen who worked for the local Democratic bosses.

Eventually the Federal government restored order by deploying Marines to guard polling stations. No one wanted to mess with Marines, and the rest of the day went smoothly. Unless you were a Democrat who had just been swamped by the black wave.

Catto had been key to helping mobilize the local black vote, and the Republican Party wanted to make sure he was rewarded. In December 1870 they made him a candidate in the special election to replace state senator William Watt, who had drowned. The special election was contentious, and Catto lost.

That was fine by him. He seemed to prefer being slightly on the outside of the political system, helping and contributing without having to get his hands dirty in the day-to-day realities of politics. No, he was happier being a teacher.

Martyr

Of course, there’s an Election Day every year.

In 1871 Pennsylvania governor John Geary and Philadelphia mayor Daniel Fox announced they would not be calling out the troops under any circumstances. They claimed that deploying the Marines in 1870 had been an overreaction, since there had been no real violence. (Never mind that the reason there hadn’t been violence was because the Marines were there.)

What was perhaps more to the point was that Geary and Fox were Democrats, and they were signaling to their operatives that it was open season on black voters. Those operatives included the boss of Catto’s district, Irish mobster/alderman “Squire Bill” McMullen. McMullen was not a subtle man. He intended to make sure that if black voters weren’t too afraid to turn up at the polls, they would be too dead to actually cast a ballot.

When the sun rose on October 10, 1871 McMullen’s thugs went about their grim work. Three black voters were shot. Another took a hatchet to the head. One had his thumb cut off. Others were beaten to within an inch of their life. Local doctors treated more than fifty people for serious wounds.

Mayor Fox realized that the violence was getting out hand, and made a personal appearance at the polling station just after noon. While he was there everything was peaceful, but as soon as the mayor left McMullen’s thugs went right back to work.

Someone called the police, which was a huge mistake. Not only were the local cops all McMullen’s men, they were led by one Lt. Haggerty who had been behind the previous year’s violence. Black men were now being forcibly dragged away from the polls, at least one of them leaving a bloody trail down the cobblestone street. At this point local judges stepped in and had Haggerty arrested, but that just made things worse.

While all this was going on, Octavius Valentine Catto was teaching at the Institute for Colored Youth. What can I say? It was a school day. He had planned to vote on his way home. At lunch, though, he and the other teachers became worried about the riots and sent their students home early. He stayed behind, catching up on his paperwork.

In the early afternoon Catto received orders from his National Guard unit, which anticipated being called up to put down the riots. He immediately realized he had left his uniform in his apartment at 814 South Street. That was only a two block walk, but it was right through the middle of the riot. And also, he was supposed to have a pistol, and he did not.

Catto went to the bank to take out twenty dollars. Along the way he was threatened by several of McMullen’s thugs, so he made a detour to the mayor’s office to lodge a formal complaint. As he left he was threatened by a second group of thugs. He ignored them and went into a local store to buy that pistol. The clerk asked Catto if he needed ammunition, but he declined, saying he had some at home. From there it was just a short jaunt down Ninth Street to Sixth Street to South Street.

Catto was just steps away from home when he ran into two more of McMullen’s thugs. As he walked by, one of them, a tall man with a bandaged head and a tattoo of the number 27 on his hand, did a double-take. He pulled a gun out his pocket, turned around, and began rushing towards Catto. Seventeen-year-old Annie Howard saw the man rushing at her teacher and shouted out a warning: “Look out, professor, that man’s going to shoot!” Catto swiveled, saw the man, and dismissively asked, “What are you about?”

What he was about was shooting. The first shot hit Catto in the thigh. He threw up his hands in defense and took a second shot in his shoulder. He tried to dodge behind a nearby streetcar and fumbled for the revolver in his pocket, thinking maybe that it would frighten off his assailant. No dice. He took two more in the chest.

The sound of gunfire finally lured Officer Robert McKnight out of his police box. Catto saw the policeman, gasped, “I demand your protection!” and took a few faltering steps in his direction before collapsing. McKnight caught Catto, relieved him of his revolver, and told him to protect himself. Then he drew his own pistol and pointed it at Catto’s head. Catto’s assailant put his gun back in his pocket and began leisurely strolling away.

Samuel Wanamaker, a local brickmaker, would not have it. He leapt out of the streetcar and began pointing, screaming, “This is an outrage, this is the man who did the shooting!” The assailant bolted up Ninth Street and his fellow thugs yelled encouragement as he ran: “Run, Frank! Get out of the way! Don’t let them get you!”

A small crowd of witnesses chased after him. “Frank” cut through several buildings and backyards and tried to duck into a tavern at Ninth and Bainbridge and hide among the other patrons, but was caught by bartender Isaac Barr after Wanamaker pointed him out. Barr handed him over to Officer McKnight… who then promptly turned him loose.

Catto was taken to “the Farm” at Eighth and South, where he breathed his last. The Reverend William Catto and Caroline LeCount identified his body.

He was 31 years old.

Six days later he was buried in his National Guard uniform. His unit escorted his coffin from the city armory, and thousands of mourners lined the streets. In the Philadelphia Tribune William C. Bolivar wrote that, “Strong men wept like children when they realized how much had been lost in the untimely death of the gifted Catto.” Caroline LeCount was more direct, throwing herself on the coffin and pleading, “Octavius, Octavius, take me with you.”

Cold Case

Catto’s friends held a rally on October 21, condemning the rioting and attacking the city for not only doing nothing to contain it, but actively allowing the police to make things worse. They were slightly less condemnatory of the counter-riots that swept the city after Election Day, as blacks retaliated against the Democrats and Irishmen.

Within hours of the shooting the mayor and local Republican Party began offering a cash reward for any information that would lead to the capture of Catto’s killers. The mayor was being performative, and the Republicans were being genuine.

Thanks to that distinctive tattoo, everyone knew who did it: Frank Kelly, a bartender who moonlit as one of McMullen’s thugs. Kelly had been busy on Election Day. In the morning he got drunk and tried to vote multiple times, then brawled with a poll inspector who was wise to his tricks. He vented his frustration by shooting hod carrier John Fawcett, then waiter Isaac Chase who had inadvertently witnessed Fawcett’s shooting, then Levi Bolden. (Chase had to be finished off with the aforementioned hatchet in the head.) Then he was grazed by a nearby bullet and had to get his head bandaged. He was wobbling home from the doctor when he passed Catto. Kelly’s companion had to be his known associate, Edward “Reddy” Dever.

The city government was more than willing to whitewash the entire day and use what little power they had left to protect the perpetrators of violence. The coroner even argued that Bolden had been suffering from Bright’s Disease, and therefore being shot had not directly caused his death, only hastened it.

Catto’s case could not be so easily brushed under the rug. Even so, no one could find Frank Kelly or Reddy Dever anywhere.

Then, five years later, there was a hot tip. Kelly had apparently fled to Cincinnati and assumed the identity of “Charles Young.” He took a job bartending at the city’s infamous gambling den, Dead Man’s Corner, and continued to dabble in political thuggery on the side.

That lasted until October 1876, when he was caught ballot stuffing. The fix was in, though, and during what should have been a routine prisoner exchange he walked out of the prison coach into another waiting coach and disappeared. During his interrogation, though, he had given up too much. A rare honest cop tipped off the Philadelphia authorities that “Young” was really Kelly, and that he was fleeing to Chicago.

Kelly’s downfall was high-wire act Emma Juteau, the “Venus of the High Trapeze,” known for her “shapely and bewitching loveliness” and a thrilling descent on a 200′ wire from which she was suspended “by her pearly teeth alone.” He was in line to see her show at the Chicago Coliseum when he was nabbed by out-of-state cops and identified by Theodore Stratton, who had been driving the streetcar Catto had tried to shelter behind and therefore had a front-row view of the entire assault.

Kelly was extradited to Philadelphia in January 1877 and went to trial for the murder of Isaac Chase, Levi Bolden, and Octavius Catto.

It was not an easy trial. Stratton, Wanamaker, and several other eyewitnesses received death threats and had to be taken into police custody. Defense counsel argued that the prosecution witnesses were political operatives working for Mayor Frank Stratton. Defense witnesses claimed the killer was not Frank Kelly but Frank Reilly, who conveniently could not testify on account of being dead. On the stand Bill McMullen spun a line of bullcrap claiming he was just an honest man trying to protect his community from outsiders.

In the end, jurors let Kelly off scot free. Mostly, they claimed, they did not believe the eyewitnesses. Five years was just too long for anyone to make a positive identification of someone they had seen only briefly, distinctive tattoos be damned.

Kelly’s friends crowed about the verdict: “There will never be a rope made to hang Frank Kelly.” Catto’s supporters fired back, “He’ll never die in bed, Catto’s ghost will kill him.” They were right that Kelly would not get to enjoy his freedom for long. He was returned to Cincinnati, convicted of voter fraud, and sentenced to a year in federal prison.

When Reddy Dever learned about his friend’s exoneration, he turned himself in thinking that in Philadelphia a white man would never be convicted of killing a black man. Depressingly, he was right. To blacks the underlying message was clear: stay in your lane, or lose your life.

Forgotten

The tragedy of Octavius Valentine Catto is that he was cut down as he was entering the prime of his life. He was only starting to make a name for himself outside of Philadelphia. Who knows what might have happened had he lived? Would he have become a great civil rights leader? One of the nation’s leading black educators? A pioneering black politician? He could have done anything, but never got the chance.

It was galling that Catto’s killer was allowed to go unpunished. It was devastating that over the next few decades his legacy was systematically unwound.

Jacob White continued to work as an educator and activist, and even fact-checked W.E.B. DuBois’s seminal The Philadelphia Negro, but he was never as bold as he had been before. Caroline LeCount also continued to teach, and never married. For a few years the pair tried to erect a memorial to Catto, but could not raise enough money.

The Quakers at the Institute for Colored Youth were more than happy to forget Catto and move forward as if nothing had happened. When Fanny Coppin retired in 1920 the Institute abandoned the idea of classical education, moved to Chester, and reverted to being a farm school.

In 1872 the Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League moved its headquarters from Philadelphia to Reading, because it was safer and safety was the order of the day. The league’s leaders proved unable or unwilling to involve themselves in hot button issues. They were just too messy.

Catto had been the driving force behind the Pythians, and the club had started to falter when he stepped away from the team to focus on his work in Washington. Without him club was unable or unwilling to navigate the new world of professional baseball, and formally disbanded in 1872. (The name was revived in the 1880s by another club, ironically managed by Roger Still, the son of William, the guy who thought baseball was a frivolous waste of time when blacks were starving in the South.)

Baseball remained segregated until 1947. It fared slightly better than the army, which only desegregated in 1948.

While Frank Kelly was being tried in 1877 national politicians were busy negotiating the “corrupt bargain” that would swing the presidential election to Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for the end of Reconstruction and the rollback of civil rights across the country. (Hayes also pardoned Frank Kelly after he had served less than half of his sentence.) To rub salt in the wound, in 1895 Plessy v. Ferguson and its ruling in favor of “separate but equal” accommodations ended Catto’s only unqualified success, desegregating Philadelphia’s streetcars.

In the wake of the 1871 Election Day riots, the Pennsylvania legislature outlawed the sale of liquor on Election Day. It continued to be a violent spectacle for decades anyway.

Found

Gone doesn’t mean forgotten, though.

On September 26, 2017 the City of Philadelphia unveiled the Octavius V. Catto Memorial on the south side of City Hall, under the watchful gaze of William Penn and around the corner from a statue of William McKinley. The monument consists of a heroic-scale figure of Catto sculpted by Branly Cadet, who you may know from his monuments to Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax outside of Dodger Stadium, striding towards a ballot box which contains a steel ball polished to a mirror sheen. Behind him are several plinths in the shape of a streetcar, decorated by plaques celebrating his other achievements. Engraved on the pillars is a truncated quote from a commencement address Catto gave in 1864, though I’m going to read a larger excerpt:

How much of the course of this terrible revolution remains yet to be run, or how many political evolutions our Government may yet be forced to make, no man can foresee. But it must be the most superficial view, indeed which concludes that any other condition than a total change in the status which the colored man has hitherto had in this country, must of necessity grow out of the conflicting theories of the parties to whose hands this question is at present committed. There must come a change, one now in process of completion, which shall force upon this nation, not so much for the good of the black man, as for its own political and industrial welfare, that course which Providence seems wisely to be directing for the mutual benefit of both peoples.

It’s a moving monument, but why Catto? Why now?

Well, just remember that the reason Catto’s story is a tragedy because it starts with small triumphs. It’s the story of a man navigating the modern world, overcoming hardships, trying to make the world better for everyone. It’s about progress — very slow progress, to be sure, but progress nonetheless. What cuts our hero low is not bull-headedness but a bullet.

When you’re faced with a story like that, you have two choices. You can focus on the tragedy of a life cut short and wallow in misery. Or you can focus on the striving, the dream, everything that comes before the end, and let that inspire you. No one wants you to remember Octavius Valentine Catto because he died. They want you to remember Octavius Valentine Catto because he died doing what was right.

Perhaps no one said it better than William C. Bolivar in a funeral tribute from the Philadelphia Tribune:

And so closed the career of a man of splendid equipment, rare force of character, whose life was so interwoven with all that was good about us, as to make it stand out in bold relief, as a pattern for those who have followed after.