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Transcription: [00:09:09]
Philadelphia was a fairly tolerant city as I've indicated, but it had a large, white working-class population who felt its social position threatened by both free blacks and, earlier, by slaves and free blacks, and

[00:09:23]
let's remember that in the 19th century th--the progressive party on civil rights was the ci-- was the Republican party.

[00:09:31]
Repu-- Black citizens, newly enfranchised citizens, universally voted the Republican ticket.

[00:09:37]
The white working class and the old conservatives, of whatever class, tended to vote Democratic on the element of States' rights and localism.

[00:09:46]
The election in 1871 was incredibly heated and during it Catto received death threats.

[00:09:53]
Politics was a rough-and-tumble business in which riots were the norm rather than the exception.

[00:10:00]
We know at some point during that election season he'd bought a gun, because he had received threats, and

[00:10:06]
just before the election in 18-- November 1871, he was accosted on the street while walking to a polling station by Franklin Kelly, a democratic operative and two of his associates.

[00:10:18]
Some kind of a fray broke out-- we don't know whether it was a fight, we don't know whether it was a straight-out assassination,

[00:10:24]
but in the case--in the course of this fight Catto was shot and killed, dying instantly on the spot.

[00:10:31]
Kelly absconded, went south and hid out for 15 years, and the city of Philadelphia was in sh--was ashamed.

[00:10:39]
Catto's-- Catto's passing, his murder, shocked the city's sensibilities. It shocked their notions of good intentions. It shocked their notions of propriety. And as well, it brought to the--it, it brought home to them, and especially to the black community, the perils of racism that

[00:10:57]
you could do absolutely everything right, you could be an exemplary citizen, you could be

[00:11:03]
the equivalent of the best connected, most well tied-in white citizen, doing exactly what a white man of his age would have--

Transcription Notes:
A brief Google for Frank Kelly's full name has not been fruitful. He could be saying Franklin, Frankland or a middle initial.