In Tasting Freedom Murray Dubin and Pulitzer Prize winner Dan Biddle painstakingly chronicle the life of this charismatic black leader a free black whose freedom was in name only. Born in the American south, where slavery permeated everyday life, he moved north where he joined the fight to be truly free free to vote, go to school, ride on streetcars, play baseball and even participate in July 4th celebrations. Catto electrified a biracial audience in 1864 when he proclaimed, There must come a change, calling on free men and women to act and educate the newly freed slaves. With a group of other African Americans who called themselves a band of brothers, they challenged one injustice after another. Tasting Freedom presents the little-known stories of Catto and the men and women who struggled to change America.
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Background Information
Frederick Douglass was a former slave who became a spokesman for abolition and eventually a wartime friend of Lincoln. Race relations between Americans of European origin and others, including Africans, Indians, and Asians, have been an issue since colonial days. Philadelphia was founded by William Penn and has many of the iconic monuments of the American Revolution.