Marking 150 years since Philly’s historic civil rights rally

150 years ago this week, Philadelphia was the site of a historic, but little-known march celebrating the ratification of the 15th Amendment giving black men the right to vote.

Air Date: April 27, 2020

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney (center) and sculptor Branly Cadet unveil a statue of Octavius Valentine Catto at City Hall in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2017. A century before the fight to end Jim Crow segregation laws, Octavius Valentine Catto was leading a civil rights movement in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
A photograph of Octavius V. Catto, taken around 1870. He told marchers the black man would vote Republican 'so long as' the party stood for equal rights. (Urban Archives Temple University)
Fanny Jackson, the educator and activist, headed Philadelphia's nationally reknowned Institute for Colored Youth, where Octavius Catto taught. Jackson cancelled classes on April 26, 1870 so students and teachers could join in the Fifteenth Amendment celebration. (Oberlin College Archives)
Frederick Douglass in about 1870, the year he took part in Philadelphia's Fifteenth Amendment march. (National Archives Gift Collection)
Octavius Catto's best friend and fellow educator and activist, Jacob C. White Jr., read a letter from President Grant at the mass meeting after the march. G.F. Richings, Evidences of Progress among Colored People)
Lucretia Mott, the white abolitionist, equal-rights activist and women's suffrage leader who was honored at the meeting after the 1870 march. (Library of Congress)
This 1870 poster depicted the Fifteenth Amendment's impact and the parades held to celebrate it. The portraits include Frederick Douglass, his fellow activist Martin Delany, John Brown, Presidents Lincoln and Grant, and Hiram Revels of Mississippi, the first African American to serve in the Senate. (Library of Congress)

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150 years ago this week, Philadelphia was the site of a historic, but little-known march celebrating the ratification of the 15th Amendment giving black men the right to vote. The march was led by prominent civil rights leaders like Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott and Philly’s own Octavius Catto. Today, we’re taking a break from pandemic coverage to tell the story of the march and explore its place in the long fight for voting rights in America.

Guest: Dan Biddle, author of “Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America”

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