Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America

In Tasting Freedom, the authors painstakingly chronicle the life and times of the extraordinary Octavius Catto—a “free” black man whose freedom was in name only—and the first civil rights movement in America. Catto electrified a biracial audience in 1864 when he called on free men and women to act and to educate the newly freed slaves, proclaiming, “There must come a change.” Tasting Freedom presents the little-known stories of Catto and the men and women who struggled to change America.