With Tuesday’s unveiling of Philadelphia’s first public statue honoring a specific African American — the educator, baseball player, and civil rights activist Octavius V. Catto — we explain who Catto was and why he is being memorialized.
Wrote, spoke and led demonstrations that helped push Pennsylvania lawmakers to ratify the 15th Amendment, which bars voting discrimination on the basis of race.
Organized the now-enfranchised black citizens and helped bring them to the polls to vote.