Credit: Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
After ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, which prohibited governments from using race to bar a person from voting, the struggle to extend and exercise that right in Philadelphia was led by Octavius Catto, who had followed Ebenezer Bassett as principal of the Institute for Colored Youth. Catto's murder during the "Election Riots" of the 1871 by a thug working for the Democratic party boss outraged the city, and helped open the polls to African-Americans voters.
