Octavius Valentine Catto was an American educator, intellectual, and civil rights activist.
33 Facts About Octavius Catto
2.
Octavius Catto became principal of male students at the Institute for Colored Youth, where he had been educated.
3.
Octavius Catto became known as a top cricket and baseball player in 19th-century Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
4.
Octavius Catto was born free, as his mother was free: Sarah Isabella Cain was a member of the city's prominent mixed-race DeReef family, which had been free for decades and belonged to the Brown Fellowship Society as a mark of their status.
5.
Octavius Catto was ordained as a Presbyterian minister before taking his family north, first to Baltimore, and then to Philadelphia, where they settled in the free state of Pennsylvania.
6.
William T Catto was a founding member of Philadelphia's Banneker Institute, an African-American intellectual and literary society.
7.
Octavius Catto wrote "A Semi-Centenary Discourse," a history of the First African Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.
8.
Octavius Catto was hired as teacher of English and mathematics at the ICY.
9.
On May 10,1864, Octavius Catto delivered ICY's commencement address, which gave a historical synopsis of the school.
10.
Octavius Catto believed that the United States government had to evolve several times in order to change.
11.
Octavius Catto understood that the change must come not necessarily for the benefit of African Americans, but more for America's political and industrial welfare.
12.
Octavius Catto lobbied to succeed Bassett as principal; however, the ICY board chose Octavius Catto's fellow teacher, Fanny Jackson Coppin, as head of the school.
13.
Octavius Catto was elected as the principal of the ICY's male department.
14.
In 1870, Octavius Catto joined the Franklin Institute, a center for science and education whose white leaders supported Octavius Catto's membership despite his race, in the face of some opposition.
15.
Octavius Catto served as principal and teacher at ICY until his death in 1871.
16.
Octavius Catto joined with Frederick Douglass and other black leaders to form a Recruitment Committee to sign up black men to fight for the Union and emancipation.
17.
Octavius Catto was commissioned as a major in the army but never saw action.
18.
On Friday, April 21,1865, at the State House in Philadelphia, Octavius Catto presented the regimental flag to Lieutenant Colonel Trippe, commander of the 24th United States Colored Troops.
19.
Octavius Catto thought that in the plan of reconstruction, the votes of the blacks could not be lightly dispensed with.
20.
In November 1864, Octavius Catto was elected to be the Corresponding Secretary of the Pennsylvania Equal Rights League.
21.
Octavius Catto served as Vice President of the State Convention of Colored People held in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in February 1865.
22.
Octavius Catto fought for the desegregation of Philadelphia's trolley car system, along with his fiancee Caroline LeCount and abolitionist William Still.
23.
Later enlisting the help of Congressmen Thaddeus Stevens and William D Kelley, Catto was instrumental in the passage of a Pennsylvania bill that prohibited segregation on transit systems in the state.
24.
Octavius Catto was active not just in the public arenas of education and equal rights, but on the sporting field.
25.
On Election Day, October 10,1871, Octavius Catto was teaching in Philadelphia.
26.
On his way to vote, Octavius Catto was intermittently harassed by whites.
27.
At the intersection of Ninth and South streets, Octavius Catto was accosted by Frank Kelly, an ethnic Irish man, who shot him three times.
28.
The city inquest was not able to determine if Octavius Catto had pulled his own gun.
29.
Later, after the cemetery was closed down, Octavius Catto's remains were reinterred at Eden Cemetery, in Collingdale, Pennsylvania.
30.
Wallace, a biographer of Octavius Catto, wrote to the Christian Recorder, questioning why no one was taking care of Octavius Catto's grave:.
31.
Octavius Catto was long an instructor in the Institute for Colored Youth, and the plan is to erect a mausoleum, and that the work be done by the pupils of the school as far as possible.
32.
On June 14,2006, the Board of Trustees of the O V Catto Memorial announced the kickoff of a $1.5 million fundraising campaign to erect a memorial statue to Catto.
33.
The sculptural group, A Quest for Parity, including a twelve-foot bronze statue of Octavius Catto, was installed at Philadelphia's City Hall on September 24,2017, and dedicated on September 26,2017.