Have you ever heard the name Octavius Catto? Well, if not you need to know all about him! An unsung hero of the black civil rights movement that fought for his people a century before Martin Luther King, Jr. stepped up to the plate!

Catto was born in 1839, under unusual circumstances. He was born a free man…. In the deep south!

His family finally settled in Philadelphia and he attended the Institute for Colored Youth where he was Valedictorian of his class.

Then the country was plunged into civil war and Catto worked alongside the legendary Frederick Douglass, actively recruiting black soliders to fight for the Union Army.

Then after the fighting was over and the war was done he didn’t lay down! He became a community organizer and also spearheaded one of the first attempts to end segregation in sports in the USA.

He was one of the people that helped form the Philadelphia Pythians, who were one of the first black baseball clubs. They went onto become the Philadelphia Giants!

He also was also doing what Rosa parks did, nearly a century earlier, defying the ban for blacks to travel on Philly’s streetcarts, once spending a whole night in a streetcart in protest of the ban and organising for more to do the same and defy the ban!

By 1837, his protests had worked and the carts were desegregated.

1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified! Black men could vote for the first time!

Catto’s work was not done, next up came Voting Rights During the last year of his life.

Catto aggressively registered black men to vote, preparing for the 1871 elections. White democrats were outraged, knowing that blacks would likely vote Republican, the way the world was at the time!

These democrats terrorized black voters in order to suppress them.

On election day in 1871 Catto was shot three times, whilst on his way to the polls. He died from his wounds. His murderer was aquitted!

He was largely left out of history but laid a path for civil disobedience for the future of the movement.

His gravestone reads “”The Forgotten Hero” Octavius Valentine Catto 1839-1871.