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Transcription: [00:04:52]
On the cultural side, Catto was one of the first organizers of a baseball team, black or white, in the United States, putting the lie to the notion that baseball was invented during the Civil War by Abner Doubleday.

[00:05:06]
Catto founded the Pythian team. Pythian, named after the ancient site of one of the Greek games. Again, a classical allusion, which bespeaks Catto's own interest in the classics, as well as in education.

[00:05:19]
And the team played among other organized, informally and formally, uh, in Philadelphia and up and down the east coast. They had difficulty arranging games with white teams, but they did play several, um, against teams from New York as well as competing in their own league.

[00:05:35]
During the war, Catto worked assiduously with Frederick Douglass and other civil rights leaders in order to raise black troops to be sent to the Union lines.

[00:05:45]
After the invasion of Phil- of Pennsylvania by Robert E. Lee in 1863, Catto raised several divisions and in a commissioning ceremony in Harrisburg he presented those divisions to the Pennsylvania governor along with a flag of their, of his own devising.

[00:06:03]
What Catto recognized was, in his twin commitments to education and raising troops, was the importance of black people to empower themselves either through education or by fighting on the side of the Union cause to help liberate themselves.

[00:06:18]
And I can't emphasize enough how, the-the import, how important it was that Catto raised troops and contributed to a black presence in the Union Army.

[00:06:28]
This was a central feature in the liberation of black people in America, um, from slavery and bondage -

[00:06:34]
because it invested them, not only by blood, that they bore blood as witnesses against their previous oppression and overturning the institution of slavery,

[00:06:44]
but it demonstrated to white society -- which had seen blacks as incompetent, unable to be organized, unable to lead, unable to fight, essentially cowardly, we know all the racial stereotypes -- it demonstrated to white society that blacks deserved to be-- [[free?]].

Transcription Notes:
Recording cuts off mid sentence.