Shining a light on O.V. Catto

The first time I heard the name Octavius Valentine Catto was through the Mummers. "O.V. Catto" was the answer to a Mummers trivia question: Name the only all-black string band ever to march in the New Year's parade.

The string band was sponsored for two parades in the late 1920s by the O.V. Catto Elks Lodge No. 20, based then in South Philadelphia. The Catto Mummers dissolved (one guess is due to Depression economics), but the lodge, and a parade connection, remain.

The scrap of Mummerabilia about the Catto Elks String Band, from the time when I first fell in love with the parade in the 1970s, led to an obvious question: Who was O.V. Catto?

The answer is anything but trivial. Octavius V. Catto (some say KAY-toe, some say KAH-toe) turns out to be one of the most brilliant, high-impact and courageous African-American Philadelphians of the 19th century, or any century.

Even in shorthand, his accomplishments are awe-inspiring:

Organizer of a nonviolent sit-in movement that desegregated city streetcars in the 1850s. Civil War major, recruiter and trainer of black troops. Star infielder and captain of the all-black Pythian baseball team. Educator-scholar who taught at the forerunner of Cheyney University. Political organizer and advocate of black empowerment when black male Philadelphians were finally assured the vote in 1870.

And then: Victim of political assassination.

It was a cowardly shot in the back fired by a white Democratic Party thug on Election Day, Oct. 10, 1871, a day of deadly rioting against black voters and hatred directed at radical Republican Catto.

He fell in front of 822 South St., a few doors from the rooming house where he lived, and near the polling place where he had just voted. An African-American friend had been beaten to death by a white mob at the polling place. Catto was headed home to don his Pennsylvania Reserves uniform, muster up his unit and patrol the streets that politically controlled city police were ignoring.

He was just 32 years old.

Catto's funeral was described as the city's largest outpouring since the death of Lincoln. It was called the largest funeral and tribute to any black person up to that time.

Gradually, Catto faded from civic memory. The Elks club took his name early in the last century. The city school system named a disciplinary high school after him (then changed it to Paul Robeson High when the school refocused on human services so its academic students wouldn't be stigmatized by the Catto name - an ironic turn).

The prevailing current description of Octavius Catto - "forgotten Philadelphian" - will soon be famously erased.

Councilman Jim Kenney and Mayor Street are leading an effort, along with the Union League and a who's who of local leaders, to erect a Catto statue on the southwest plaza of City Hall. The Octavius V. Catto Memorial Fund, with a goal of $1.5 million, will also bankroll an educational foundation to tell the Catto story.

Kenney, a lifetime Mummer and product of city Catholic schools, says he was astonished, as an adult, to learn the Catto story. And he was appalled that this powerful, inspiring story was never taught in city schools, public or parochial.

The statue project, launched in June, is moving ahead with a national competition for its design under way.

Now back to the Catto-Mummers connection. A non-costumed brass band affiliated with the Catto Elks Lodge (now at 4930 N. Broad) has been parading for decades. For 20 years, they've accompanied the Goodtimers Comic Club, whose late owner-director, Al Heller, was a fierce advocate for Catto's legacy and black participation in Mummery.

Also parading proudly with the Goodtimers, competing for a Comic Division prize, will be the North Philadelphia-based Schuylkill River Strutters, whose co-captain and founder, Troy Baylor, is a member of the Catto Elks.

The Strutters, drawn from teens and young adults in East Logan and the Dazzling Diamonds drill team, have been in the parade almost continuously since the Goodtimers' first year, 1985.

Baylor told me that, as a kid, he was told African-Americans could never be Mummers. It's still a parade woefully short of Philadelphia-style diversity, but Baylor says, "Our kids made history. Times change, and people can get along."

BAYLOR IS also active in Men United for a Better Philadelphia, which takes to the streets to combat gun violence and work for opportunity. Baylor and his strutting young black Mummers are fitting examples of the Catto legacy.

Octavius Catto himself will soon stand tall outside the building that symbolizes the empowerment he lived and died for. His story of heroism and martyrdom will be told in our schools, in our halls of power, in our civic soul. And his statue will peer down, every New Year's, on the Mummers Parade. *

Ron Goldwyn, who covered the Mummers as a Daily News staff writer for two decades, is deputy communications director for Rep. Chaka Fattah. To contribute and learn more about the Catto Memorial and legacy: www.cattomemorial.org.