Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,844

This is the grave of Caroline LeCount.

Born in 1846 in Philadelphia, LeCount grew up in the Black activism of the pre-Civil War community of that city. Her father was a cabinet maker and participant in the Underground Railroad. After 1850, with the Fugitive Slave Act, Philadelphia was very much not a safe city for self-freeing slaves anymore. She went to the best available school, the Institute for Colored Youth, where she graduated in 1863.

LeCount wanted to be a teacher, but Black women weren’t hired to be teachers in this time and place. She took the teaching exam anyway and became the first Black woman to pass it. A school hired her after graduation and in fact, she became its principal in 1868, which is really impressive for a woman of any race at this time. This would remain her job for the rest of her active life, until her retirement in 1911. As a teacher and principal, she had a respected position in a small but growing community. It was by no means a guarantee that she would use her power to fight for collective good. Lots of Black leaders from this period just protected their own little fiefdoms, often by making deals with whites, and that was as true in the North as the South.

LeCount was not one to make a lot of compromises with power. She used her professional position to fight for justice. During the Civil War, she was part of the Ladies’ Union Association. This was a pro-Union group that bought supplies for American troops. But there was a flip side to this. See, Philadelphia had segregated public transportation. So these women would take their stuff onto streetcars and challenge the segregation laws at the very same time that they literally had supplies for Union troops with them. The idea was to be arrested. LeCount and her finance, Octavius Catto, worked with a group of biracial abolitionists on this. LeCount would get arrested and then they’d try the case and place the city’s discrimination laws on trial.

They would never marry because Catto was killed in the fight for civil rights in Philadelphia in 1871. The death of Catto was a serious blow to the civil rights movement in the North. Often LeCount gets mentioned among historians in context of his murder and of course that matters, but she’s much more than just being the fiancé of a murdered leader.

In recent years, LeCount’s actions and bravery have received more attention from historians and activists. The comparison is obvious–she’s the 19th century version of Rosa Parks. Of course, it was a different type of transportation, but otherwise, the comparison works. And like in Montgomery, the strategy worked. In 1867, Pennsylvania passed a law banning segregation on its streetcars. LeCount then sued a driver who refused to let her ride for violating the law. That led the city to crack down on the transit companies and make it clear they could not operate in the city if they did not follow this law. The organization continued after the war too and one of their project was to make clothing for Benjamin Butler because of his work during the war and then in the Freedmen’s Bureau, telling him he was the one general who truly had Black interests in his heart, more than Sherman or Grant or Sheridan.

In later years, LeCount worked closely with W.E.B. DuBois on his 1899 book The Philadelphia Negro, the first academic sociology of a Black community in the United States. DuBois naturally relied on community leaders to help him make connections and get the necessary information and LeCount was one of them.

LeCount also kept up her fight for equality in education. In 1891, as the nation turned sharply away from caring about Black rights, local whites started a campaign criticizing Black teachers. She went after the city’s Board of Education. She noted publicly that Black teachers had to score higher on the city teachers’ exam to qualify, which was true. Her fierce defense of Black teachers caused the city to back down.

LeCount was also known for her excellent imitations of the Irish, which she would pull out during her public talks. As the Irish were often open enemies of the Black community, she could use this effectively and make her audiences laugh.

LeCount died in 1923. She was 76 or 77 years old.

Caroline LeCount is buried in Eden Cemetery, Collingdale, Pennsylvania. The headstone is new. In fact, a lot of this cemetery–filled with great Black leaders from Philadelphia, has unmarked headstones. Maybe they were never put up, maybe they disappeared. But in 2022, local residents started agitating to rename Taney Street as LeCount Street. Good call. As part of that process, they bought and placed this headstone for her. In October 2024, the city agreed and changed the name.

If you would like this series to visit other Black women who led fights for justice, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Pauli Murray is in Brooklyn and Dorothy Height is in Brentwood, Maryland. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.