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 blacks. This dramatic book not only rescues the intrepid Octavius Catto from obscurity but also reminds us that this struggle-and the violent opposition to it-long predated the modern civil rights era."-Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University" "Tasting Freedom is masterfully researched and cogently written. Biddle and Dubin transport us to yesteryear, profiling some of the central figures of the Civil War era and revealing the birth and rise of the black intelligentsia in this country. Tasting Freedom is a valuable triumph-and a work of importance."-Elija Anderson, Yale University" "Tasting Freedom is required reading for anyone who thinks the civil rights movement started in the 1950's with Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks (hint: you're off by a full century). This is a revelation for those of us who grew up being fed morality tales about righteous Northern free staters standing against Southern slaveholders (hint: neither offered real freedom). Biddle and Dubin's book is for all of us who love a story about baseball and war, about race and the making of America."-Larry Tye, author of Satchel: The Life and Times of an Amereican Legend" "If you fancy knowing about growing up black in mid-nineteenth-century Philadelphia, there is no better place to start than with Biddle and Dubin's powerful and poignant biography of Octavius V. Catto. For those who believe that post-Civil War Reconstruction was only a Southern affair, this book is an eye-opener."-Gary B. Nash, Director of the National Center for History in the Schools, UCLA, and author of The Liberty Bold" "Biddle and Dubin do a superb job of exploring the complex and fascinating life of forgotten civil rights hero Octavius V. Catto. The researach is first-rate and the breadth of coverage is impressive."-Julie Winch, University of Massachusetts Boston" "An entrancing portrait of a leading Renaissance man for equal rights...Nothing matches it at the moment as a prequel to Thomas J. Sugrue's much-noted Sweet Land of Liberty."-Library Journal" "Octavius Valentine Catto was a second baseman on Philadelphia's best black baseball team, a teacher at the city's finest balck school, an activist who fought in the state capital and on the streets for equal rights, and an orator who shared the satage 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.