He was born in Charleston, shared stages with Frederick Douglass and recruited black men for Lincoln’s armies. He played for a pioneering black baseball team, taught at a renowned Philadelphia black school, and fought for equality in the state house and the streets. His name was Octavius Catto, and he and his allies—men and women, black and white—waged their battles for civil rights a century before Birmingham and Selma.
The College of Charleston will host a lecture and book signing by Daniel Biddle and Murray Durbin, the authors of Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America (Temple University Press, 2010). The event will be held on March 31, 2011 at the Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library at 7:30 p.m. Presented by the CLAW (Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World) program, the event is free and open to the public.
“Many Charlestonians, black and white, played major parts in civil rights in the 19th century and the College is fostering an examination of this period, now especially when the anniversary of the Civil War and the long march for civil rights for all is upon us,” College of Charleston Archivist Harlan Greene says. “The authors spent time at the College’s Avery Research Center and other Charleston archives in their research to write this inquisitive book.”
Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel R. Biddle and Murray Dubin chronicle the life and times of this charismatic leader in a movement of preachers, teachers, Underground Railroad agents and former slaves. Their white supporters ranged from pacifist Lucretia Mott to murderous John Brown.
Catto’s “band of brothers,” as they called themselves, anticipated Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, and Martin Luther King Jr. by nearly a century. They sat down in whites-only streetcars, challenged baseball’s color line and marched through a rain of eggs, epithets, brickbats and bullets to proclaim their right to vote. The story of their struggle to change America will change readers’ understanding of America’s racial history.
Daniel R. Biddle, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Pennsylvania editor, has worked in nearly every phase of newspaper reporting and editing. His investigative stories on the courts won a Pulitzer Prize and other national awards. He has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and has taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Murray Dubin, author of South Philadelphia: Mummers, Memories and the Melrose Diner, was a reporter and editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer for 34 years before leaving the newspaper in 2005.
For more information, contact Lisa Randle at 843.953.1923.
