Before Rosa Parks, There Was Octavius Valentine Catto

Long before Rosa Parks, Octavius Valentine Catto refused to leave his seat on a segregated Philly trolley. Catto is a lesser-known but no less important part of the American story.

Catto was born in 1839 in South Carolina to a free woman of mixed race from the prominent DeReef family. His father was a freed slave and a Presbyterian minister. Catto’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 “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 joined 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, Catto 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. He raised a volunteer regiment of black soldiers, but the army rejected them. Eventually, the Secretary of War Edward Stanton overruled the army, allowing Catto and his friend Frederick Douglass to form 11 black regiments from the Philadelphia area.

Catto’s troops trained in areas where trolleys refused to carry black passengers. On May 17, 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 be not 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 of the 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.

The man was Octavius Valentine Catto. His resistance also included 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:

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 invidious and unjust usages shall have ceased.

Catto worked with two U.S. senators to pass a bill in Pennsylvania that prohibited discrimination in transportation. The parallels between what Catto did in Philadelphia and what Rosa Parks would do in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama are striking. Both efforts set in motion national change.

Along with his academic, political, legal, and military work, Catto was an athlete. He co-founded the Pythian Base Ball Club and promoted baseball in the black community. Because of his efforts, Philadelphia emerged as a major center for Negro League Baseball. In addition to challenging as many white teams to games as they could, in 1869, they played the Olympic Ball Club in the first formal baseball game with teams from different races.

Catto continued to fight for equal rights, especially voting rights. The Fifteenth Amendment, giving blacks the right to vote, was proposed in 1869 and passed in 1870. Catto traveled throughout Pennsylvania, educating blacks about what the amendment would mean for them.

The prospect of large numbers of black voters threatened the political status quo, especially for Irish immigrants, who were mostly Democratics. Already competing with blacks for housing and jobs, they now feared that their political power was in jeopardy. In Catto’s own precinct, the passing of the amendment could have switched the balance of power away from Democrats to the Republicans.

This led to large-scale voter intimidation, violence, and riots. Most of the police were Irish and often 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 Catto in the back three times, including once through the heart. He was pronounced dead at the police station.

Catto 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.

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Archive Photos/Stringer

John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.