“Without Fear and Without Reproach”: Octavius V. Catto and the Early Civil Rights Movement in Pennsylvania

Posted by on Feb 5, 2021 in | Comments Off on “Without Fear and Without Reproach”: Octavius V. Catto and the Early Civil Rights Movement in Pennsylvania On Tuesday, September 26, 2017, the City of Philadelphia unveiled a monument to Octavius V. Catto in a ceremony at the southwestern apron of City Hall. Catto was a cornerstone figure in Philadelphia’s early civil rights struggle — a recruiter of an African American militia during the Civil War, an instrumental figure in the victory to desegregate Philadelphia’s horse-drawn streetcars, a...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Feb 5, 2021 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter The features in this edition focus on Pennsylvanians who strived for a more equitable, pluralistic America. The articles cover a period from the mid-19th century into the early 20th, a time when movements for civil rights were emerging and new barriers were being broken in several social and cultural realms. The story of Octavius V. Catto reflects a key moment in the history of the struggle for...
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The Search by Blacks For Employment and Opportunity: Industrial Education in Philadelphia

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Search by Blacks For Employment and Opportunity: Industrial Education in Philadelphia I Historian Sol Cohen describes the industrial­-education movement at the end of the nineteenth century as an effort to relegate the new immigrant to the lower levels of society. Placing emphasis on the “status rivalry” between the middle-class progressives and the new immigrant, Cohen views industrial education as the means used by the progressives to keep the immi­grant in his...
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Fanny M. Jackson and Philadelphia’s Institute for Colored Youth

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Fanny M. Jackson and Philadelphia’s Institute for Colored Youth This idea was deep in my soul. Where it came from I cannot tell. It was in me to get an education and teach my people.” The sentiment was written nearly a century ago, in 1912, by Fanny M. Jackson Coppin (1837-1913), principal of Philadelphia’s Institute for Colored Youth (ICY). All but forgotten today, Coppin and her distinguished career of nearly four decades at the Institute for...
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