Octavius Catto

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A century before the fight to end Jim Crow segregation laws, Octavius Valentine Catto was leading a civil rights movement in Philadelphia. The 19th-century educator and activist fought for a better education for black students, led efforts to desegregate the city’s streetcars and pushed for equal voting rights — all before he […]

  Octavius V. Catto was a prominent civil rights activist and educator in Philadelphia who tragically lost his life on Election Day in 1871 while exercising his right to vote. Catto, like many Blacks at the time, was a supporter of the Republican Party and met the violent opposition of Irish immigrants who supported the […]