Get Out The Vote ~ With Activist Stella Antley

Primary Sources, Black History

Get Out The Vote with Activist Stella Antley! This show is dedicated to the memory of Octavius Catto ~In 1871, during the the first election in which blacks could vote, Octavius Catto was murdered by a Democratic party operative while canvassing for Republican candidates. On his way back from the polls, Catto, who had spearheaded a get-out-the-vote drive for black voters, was shot in the back by a political opponent. Catto’s funeral was the city’s largest to date. His assassination rallied his supporters in the Republican Party, which would dominate Philadelphia politics for the next 80 years, thanks in part to black support. Succeeding generations of African Americans named buildings and professional organizations after him. But by the middle of the 20th century, as the civil rights movement turned its attention to desegregating the South and ensuring housing equality in the North, Catto had become, as his graveside monument proclaims, a “Forgotten Hero.” As perhaps the only historical figure who has been compared to both George Steinbrenner and Rosa Parks, he’s worth remembering. The first full-length biography of Catto, Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America, was published in 2010. It is available for purchase at the National Constitutional Center’s gift shop. His death was a harbinger of a new era in race relations in which the achievement of full civil rights for African Americans would be a dream long deferred.