Excerpts from the book
Get a taste of Tasting Freedom by reading the excerpts below.
It was election day 1871, and the busy South Street area -- the institutional and emotional heart of the black community -- had been rocked Read More >
ON NOVEMBER 24, 1800, as Thomas Jefferson rode from Monticello in an open four-wheeled phaeton to conclude his campaign for president, Octavius Catto’s grandmother Read More >
THE SPLENDID GAS LAMPS of Pennsylvania Hall were being lit for the first time to illuminate a rare scene. Antislavery orators would stand at the Read More >
ON A JANUARY DAY in 1844, the nation’s secretary of state described the condition of colored America. The 1840 Census showed that free Negroes in Read More >
OCTAVIUS CATTO WAS nine years old when his father said prayers with the giants. It was late on an October night, past bedtime for children Read More >
OCTAVIUS was turning ten. He was not the eldest of the ever-increasing Catto brood, or even the oldest boy. But he took well to all Read More >
McMullen. His name was a synonym for power. As a young man, he was "Bull," pugnacious, a fighter, a figure worthy of fear and respect. Read More >
On March 4, 1853, two grand inaugurations occurred. In blizzard-bound Washington, President Franklin Pierce asked twenty thousand listeners to respect "the rights of the South" Read More >
By Octavius's junior year, the I.C.Y.'s reliance on colored teachers for colored pupils had drawn so much notice that visitors from other states came to Read More >
Octavius began his teaching career in a season of revelations. As the ice melted on the Schuylkill, he and five other colored teachers labored to keep Read More >
On a winter night in 1860, a northbound train pulled into Cincinnati and disgorged forty bedraggled colored women and children. They were ending a journey of Read More >
Philadelphia greeted war with two faces. Aside from Chestnut Street, busy with people reading the latest war news on boards outside the newspaper offices, the city Read More >
It was like the pigs' snouts and offal that graced the Schuylkill after any substantial rain, floating down from the houses and butcher shops of Read More >
Negro baseball exploded after the war. Much more that just a growth in exercise or leisure, the tradition of fraternal, social and service organizations was Read More >
A novel task confronted Grant in his first months in office -- encourage an entire race to get in the Republican fold and stay there. Read More >
The sun began climbing the sky at 6:07 a.m. Within twenty-five minutes, William McMullen was at the polls. They had not opened, but he had Read More >
The trial of Frank Kelly began the next morning. A spacious new Common Pleas courtroom at Sixth and Chestnut streets, the product of Stokley's building boom, Read More >
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