Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America
"This is a great story and a compelling history of the original civil rights movement-with its own Dr. King. In Tasting Freedom, Biddle and Dubin bring to light a hero whose footprints helped lead America through the challenges of racial injustice: Octavius Catto. The Story is both riveting and elucidative."-Juan Williams, author of Eyes on the Prize and Thurgood Marshalt" "Biddle and Dubin have brought to life a leader of the Civil War-era struggle against slavery and for equal rights for...
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Octavius Valentine Catto was a second baseman on Philadelphia's best black baseball team, a teacher at the city's finest black school, an activist who fought in the state capital and on the streets for equal rights, and an orator who shared the stage with Frederick Douglass. With his murder during an election-day race riot in 1871, the nation lost a civil rights pioneer—one who risked his life a century before the events that took place in Selma and Birmingham. In Tasting Freedom Daniel Biddle (winner of the Pulitzer Prize) and Murray Dubin painstakingly chronicle the life of this charismatic black leader—a "free" black man whose freedom was in name only. Born in the American South, where slavery permeated everyday life, he moved north, where he joined the fight to be truly free—free to vote, go to school, ride on streetcars, play baseball, and even participate in Fourth of July celebrations. Catto electrified a biracial audience in 1864 when he called on free men and women to act and to educate the newly freed slaves, proclaiming, "There must come a change." With a group of other African Americans who called themselves a "band of brothers," he challenged one injustice after another. Tasting Freedom presents the little-known stories of Catto and the men and women who struggled to change America. This book will change your understanding of civil rights history.
PrefaceIntroduction "A Hundred O.V. Cattos" 1Chapter 1 Charleston 5Chapter 2 Arm In Arm 27Chapter 3 "Keep The Flame Burning..." 59Chapter 4 With Giants 77Chapter 5 Lessons 93Chapter 6 The Irish, The Killers, And Squire Mcmullen 115Chapter 7 "Arise, Young North" 139Chapter 8 "How Much I Yearn To Be A Man" 169Chapter 9 A Chance On The Pavement 205Chapter 10 The Wolf Killers 247Chapter 11 Manhood 281Chapter 12 The Battle For The Streetcars 323Chapter 13 Baseball 355Chapter 14 The Hide Of The Rhinoceros 377Chapter 15 Election Day 421Chapter 16 The Venus Of The High Trapeze 441Epilogue The Legacy 473Acknowledgments 487Notes 491Bibliography 569Index 603
