The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Black Lives Matter - 1871 in Philadelphia: The murder of Octavius ​​Catto

2021-05-08T20:56:20.355Z


Even after slavery ended, blacks remained second-class citizens in the United States. If you wanted to vote, you risked your life: in 1871 Octavius ​​Catto was shot by a racist in the street.


A contemporary depiction shows the dramatic scene: in the middle of Philadelphia, a white man shoots an elegantly dressed black man with a revolver.

He flees - apparently hit in the back - into the arms of a rushing policeman.

Pedestrians and women in a tram stare in horror at what is happening.

Several eyewitnesses recognize the man who was shot: Octavius ​​Catto.

The city-famous star of the Pythian baseball club and school principal urges rallies for equal rights for African Americans.

On this mission, the 32-year-old traveled through Philadelphia on October 10, 1871. It was election day and he was urging the people in the black quarters to go to the polls. The US Congress had given assurances that no one should be "excluded on the basis of race", as it was called the 15th Amendment, which was passed in April 1870. Catto promoted the once progressive Republicans - the party of President Abraham Lincoln, who had victoriously waged the civil war against the slave-owning states of the US South and was murdered by a white racist for it in 1865.

That Catto suffered a similar fate reflected the situation in the northern United States.

Whites from the poorer classes feared disadvantages, above all competition on the labor market, and therefore supported the democrats, who at the time were still in favor of racial segregation.

Blacks, they correctly assume, would vote Republican.

In Philadelphia, mobs of Irish emigrants blocked access to polling stations for African Americans.

The police, many of whom were also of Irish descent, barely intervened when riots broke out on election day and white rioters demolished black houses.

The Underground Railroad ended in Philadelphia

The four bullets at Octavius ​​Catto, who died on the scene, were fired by Frank Kelly, immigrant from Ireland and known as an activist of the Democratic Party. The killer managed to go into hiding in the crowd and was not charged until six years later. During on-the-spot investigations and later in court, witnesses testified that the attacked did not draw a weapon; a historical illustration, on the other hand, shows Catto with a pistol in his right hand.

At the time of Catto's murder on the street, about 22,000 black people lived in Philadelphia among the approximately 700,000 residents. The legendary "Underground Railroad" ended in this stronghold of the anti-slavery movement of the mid-19th century; the secret network smuggled escaped slaves from the south to the north. Citizens from the Quaker religious community ("The light of God lives in everyone") helped the refugees. Together with free African Americans, they provided shelter for blacks from the south, found them jobs or organized their onward travel to Canada.

Octavius ​​Catto came to the north in 1844 as a five-year-old from the slave-holding state of South Carolina.

He was spared the traumatic experience of the Underground Railroad because his parents were among the few free blacks in the south.

His mother, Sarah Isabella Cain, was from Charleston;

his father, William Catto, had been released from slavery and was serving as a Presbyterian pastor.

In Philadelphia, the Cattos were primarily looking for a future for their son.

A black bourgeoisie ran schools and shops, libraries, choirs and clubs in the city.

Attacks with incendiary flares and pistols

Afro-Americans nevertheless remained second class.

They were not allowed to use the city's horse-drawn trams and were never safe from insults and attacks from racist youth when they strolled through the city.

"Black people in the north did not have to fear flogging by slave owners," write authors Daniel Biddle and Murray Dubin, "but they were threatened with insults and attacks with incendiary torches and firearms."

Between 1828 and 1849, there were five major riots in Philadelphia in which white mobs destroyed homes and businesses.

An angry crowd burned the Pennsylvania Hall built by Philadelphia's Anti Slavery Society in 1838.

Enlarge image

Calling Cattos to Arms

The anti-slavery activists also funded the Institute for Colored Youth, which taught Latin, Greek, and higher mathematics, among other things.

Octavius ​​Catto graduated there in 1858, top of the class.

As one of the first Afro-Americans, he became a lecturer and eventually head of the elite school.

He also made a name for himself as a politician and called his fellow citizens to arms when southern troops advanced as far as Pennsylvania in the Civil War.

"Men of color, to arms to arms, now or never," read posters in Philadelphia's black quarters.

Catto initiated one of the first divisions of African American volunteers in the Army of the North;

The United States Colored Troops were commanded by white officers.

Soldiers in war, citizens with equal rights in peacetime

Catto enlisted himself in the army. As a highly educated organizational talent, he became an officer - but only deployed in the hinterland. The white military leadership wanted to avoid blacks waging direct war against whites. Afro-Americans, however, hoped, as they did later in the two world wars of the 20th century, to be rewarded for their service as soldiers with recognition as citizens with equal rights. "Let soldiers in were citizens in peace," Catto demanded at a rally in Philadelphia two weeks before the end of the war on May 9, 1865.

The hoped-for reforms did not materialize and Philadelphia's public transport system was also reserved for whites.

But now resistance was forming.

On May 18, 1865, the New York Times reported that "a colored man" had boarded a tram and refused to get off.

After long discussions, the insecure driver unhitched his horses and left the bus stop while sympathizers gathered around the man - it was Octavius ​​Catto.

With this action began what is arguably the first campaign of civil disobedience in the United States.

A good century before Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, black men and women disregarded prohibitions and kept getting on Philadelphia's trams - until Pennsylvania's parliament banned segregation on public transport by law in 1867.

Catto also fought against discrimination in sports.

As an avid baseball player, he and a friend founded the Pythian Base Ball Club (named after the Pythian Games, competitions in ancient Greece).

The black team was not allowed to compete in the league.

After all, there were two encounters with white teams in September 1869: The Pythians lost 23:44 to the Olympians, Philadelphia's leading club, but won against a city selection.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in detail on both games, which attracted a large number of spectators and went without incident.

The murder went unpunished

The whites could apparently accept that blacks were now involved in the national sport of baseball.

But choose?

That went too far for many.

White mobs raged in Philadelphia when African Americans tried to vote in 1871.

Catto, who led a campaign for their registration and drummed for the ballot, was shot - and the murder went unpunished.

display

Title: Caine: the Passion of Octavius ​​Catto

Label: WINTER & WINTER

approx. € 17.49

Price query time

07.05.2021 12.13 p.m.

No guarantee

Order from Amazon

Order from Thalia

Order from Weltbild

Product reviews are purely editorial and independent.

Via the so-called affiliate links above, we usually receive a commission from the dealer when making a purchase.

More information here

Six years later, the alleged perpetrator was arrested in Chicago and transferred to Philadelphia. He was now called Charles Young. At the trial in April 1877 there was uncertainty about the identity of the accused; some witnesses also claimed that Catto had drawn a gun and shot. Still, the Philadelphia Times reported "overwhelming" evidence of Kelly aka Young's guilt. The jury decided - in case of doubt in favor of the accused - on acquittal. They were all white.

Thousands flocked to Catto's funeral;

Philadelphia's newspapers described the dead as "the pride of his race in the city."

But later on, Catto was largely forgotten.

It wasn't until 2010 that a book appeared about the fighter for black civil rights.

It inspired the composer and pianist Uri Caine to write “The Passion of Octavius ​​Catto”, a requiem for chamber orchestra, gospel choir and jazz trio.

In 2017, the mayor unveiled a Catto statue in front of the town hall.

It became the assembly point for Philadelphia's Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-05-08

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-01T11:59:12.105Z
News/Politics 2024-02-26T15:44:30.789Z

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.