Bartolomeo Vanzetti (left) and Nicola Sacco being escorted to their trial. |
In
the wake of the mass suppression and
repression during the Red Scare following World
War I left wing organizations—what
was left of them—were forced to go on the defensive. For much of the following decade a lot of
their organizational effort went
into raising money and consciousness for the legal defense of scores of martyrs and for the support of the families of jailed militants. The same pattern happened after the McCarthyite suppression of the 1950’s
and in the backlash to student radicals,
the anti-war movement, and militant Black and other minority movements in the early ’70’s.
But no case in any of these three eras
attracted as much attention, indignation,
and world wide support as the case
of Nicalo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two immigrant Italian anarchists who
were executed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on August 23,
1927.
On April 15, 1920 an armed gang attacked a payroll
shipment destined for the Slater-Morrill
Shoe Company in Braintree, the ancestral hometown of John and John Quincy Adams. Frederick Parmenter, a paymaster, and
security guard Alessandro Berardelli were
shot and killed and more than $15,000 cash—a major haul—was stolen. The crime was part of an increasing wave of brazen robberies by armed gangs
that spread across America in the years after the war.
Police
set a trap for suspects using a 1914 Oakland
automobile believed to be used in
the robbery as bait. Sacco and Vanzetti
accompanied two other men, both known members of their anarchist circle in
attempting to reclaim the car from a garage.
The other suspects escaped. Sacco
and Vanzetti were soon arrested on a street
car. Each was carrying a pistol—which was both common and legal at the time.
Fearful
that they were being targeted for deportation
as many other members of their Italian anarchist community had been, both men
originally lied to police about their political connections, which would later
be used against them. Amid sensational
publicity, the two men were indicted for the crime.
May be passport photos, at any rate from about the time they arrived in the States in 1908. |
Sacco
and Vanzetti both arrived in the United
States from their native Italy in 1908 and settled in the Boston area, home of large and growing immigrant community that provided hands
for major local industries including
textile and shoe manufacturing. Sacco,
then a 17 year old from Torremaggiore,
Foggia got work as shoemaker. Twenty year old Vanzetti from Villafalletto, Cuneo became a fish monger.
Both
experienced the hostility and prejudice of New
England Yankees to poverty stricken Italian immigrants and knew of the
harsh conditions in mills and plants.
Each became a part of the loose knit anarchist community around Luigi Galleani’s Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle), which
advocated violent direct action against
capitalists and the state.
Some members of the organization were known to make and use bombs as well make other attacks. Others supported the actions
philosophically.
Sacco
and Vanzetti did not meet each other until working in support of a 1917 strike.
They became close friends and comrades.
Neither was considered a leader
in the anarchist circle, although the more articulate Vanzetti sometimes was a speaker at meetings. And neither had a criminal record, but both were known to local police for their
activity as strike supporters and in demonstrations
of the unemployed.
During
the suppression of radicals that began during the War, Luigi Galleani and his
followers were top targets of the Bureau
of Immigration for hasty deportation.
Galleani and dozens of others were sent packing. Cronaca Sovversiva was banned from the U.S. Mail for advocating the overthrow of the government and
opposing the Draft. Sacco and Vanzetti were among a number of
group members who went to Mexico
during the war, allegedly to avoid the draft.
But the two claimed that they were only trying to avoid deportation to
Italy and looking for a way to get to Russia
to join the Revolution there.
At war’s end they returned to the U.S. and found
their revolutionary comrades were largely driven
underground and operating quietly in the Italian neighborhoods in something
like secret cells.
In preparation for the major case, Vanzetti was
separately brought to trial in an earlier robbery in Bridgeport. Virtually no evidence was presented tying him to
that crime and a strong alibi supported by many witnesses, he was found guilty. Most of
Vanzetti's witnesses were Italians who spoke English poorly, and their trial
testimony, given largely in translation was discounted by the American jury. Vanzetti was given the unusually harsh
sentence of 10-15 years in prison. The
success of that case encouraged prosecutors to pursue the Braintree case.
It
became apparent that a fair trial
would be next to impossible with prosecutors
signaling that they were going to try the men more on their anarchism than on
the evidence. Enter Carlo Tresca, the best known Italian anarchist in America. Tresca was an anarcho-sydicalist whose views were both more sophisticated than the Galleani circle and whose strategies relied
on mass labor action rather than
violent propaganda of the deed. But he sympathized with his fellow
Italians and, as he came to know them, admired them personally.
Tresca
had been a leading organizer for Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the landmark Lawrence Strike of 1912 and had
organized the defense of indicted Wobblies
Arturo Giavanitti and Joe Ettor
which had famously led to their acquittals of inciting a riot in which a young
Italian mill worker was shot and killed by police. Drawing on that experience, Tresca and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, another
Lawrence Strike leader and his sometimes lover,
set out to organize mass support for the two men via newspaper articles, tracts
and pamphlets, street corner oration, and mass
demonstrations. He also brought in
the successful IWW lawyer from the Lawrence cases, Fred H. Moore. To finance
these operations he mobilized the IWW’s
General Defense Committee which raised funds from workers nationwide by the
sale of inexpensive emergency defense
stamps. The Committee was already
well established and already very busy with the follow up the mass trials of
IWW leaders by the Federal government and ongoing persecution by states. In
addition Flynn mobilized the International
Labor Defense (ILD).
A Sacco and Vanzetti demonstration. |
Soon
mass demonstrations were erupting not only in the U.S. but around the
world. And donations in support of Sacco
and Vanzetti poured in. Other radicals,
including the Socialist Party and
the infant Communist Party, while
attempting to distance themselves
from the men’s anarchism joined in the defense as the case looked more and more
like a railroad job.
Moore
decided it was no longer possible to defend Sacco and Vanzetti solely against
the criminal charges of murder and robbery. Instead he would have them frankly
acknowledge their anarchism in court and try to establish that their arrest and
prosecution stemmed from their radical activities. He exposed the prosecution’s hidden motive—the desire to abet the Federal authorities in suppression of the Italian anarchist
movement.
After
a six weeks long trial, presided over by a judge
who referred to the defendants as anarchist
bastards during which the themes of patriotism and radicalism were often
sharply contrasted by the prosecution and the defense, the jury found Sacco and
Vanzetti guilty of robbery and murder on July 14, 1921. But that was just the beginning.
A
long stream of competing investigations
lay ahead as well as a blue ribbon panel
made up of the toniest Boston Brahmins and
endless court appeals. After the men were condemned to death on what
increasingly looked like shaky testimony and doctored physical evidence, the
international protest grew. The writer Anitole France, a veteran of the Dryfus Affair defense and fresh from
winning the prestigious Nobel Prize
penned an Appeal to the American People in behalf of Sacco and
Vanzetti.
In
preparation for motions for a new trial Moore uncovered more damning evidence
that the prosecution was a frame up.
Three key prosecution witnesses
stated that they had been coerced into identifying Sacco at the scene of the
crime, but when confronted by they denied any coercion. One of them, nurse Lola Andrews told authorities that she
was forced to sign an affidavit stating she had wrongfully identified Sacco and
Vanzetti. She signed a counter-affidavit the following day. Another, Lewis Pelser, described how he had
submitted to alleged prosecutorial coercion while drunk and signed a
counter-affidavit shortly thereafter.
These conflicting accounts should have cast doubt on the testimony.
Later
it came to light that someone had switched
the barrel of Sacco’s gun with that of another Colt automatic used for
comparison, rendering that key physical evidence suspect. Much later it was shown that the gun was
outside of police custody for some time, disassembled and reassembled several
times and that the shell casings and one bullet allegedly tying the gun to the
robbery may themselves have been planted or switched.
More
eyewitnesses were found bolstering both men’s alibis—Vanzetti that he was
selling Christmas eels and Sacco
that he was in Boston at the Italian
Consulate renewing documents. The
presiding judge at both Vanzetti’s first trial and the combined Braintree case,
Webster Thayer, consistently barred
new evidence and denied all motions for a new trial on October 1, 1924. His conduct during the hearings was so heavy
handed that Boston Globe
reporter Frank Sibley, who had
covered the trial, wrote a protest to the Massachusetts Attorney General condemning Thayer's blatant bias.
Shortly
after rejecting a new trial Thayer told a fellow attorney and Dartmouth alumnus, “Did you see what I
did with those anarchistic bastards the other day. I guess that will hold them
for a while ... Let them go to the Supreme
Court now and see what they can get out of them.”
Public
opinion was beginning to swing to Sacco and Vanzetti’s side, not because of
sympathy for their politics, but because it became increasingly evident that
they were being railroaded.
In
1924 Moore was replaced as chief defense council by William Thompson, a respected Boston lawyer with impeccable Brahmin
connections. The courtroom strategy
swung back to legal technicalities. On May 12, 1926 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling not on
the evidence but on Thayer’s conduct of the trial, ruled that it found no
error.
As
Thompson turned to filing new appeals, support for the men continued to grow in
radical, socialist, and now in respectable liberal circles. Felix Frankfurter, then a law professor
at Harvard did more than any
individual to rally respectable opinion
behind the two men.
Meanwhile
the defense began to investigate a statement given in November 1925 by Celestino Medeiros, an ex-convict awaiting trial for murder,
confessing to the Braintree robbery and absolving both Sacco and Vanzetti. In May of 1926 Judge Thayer again took a
hearing for a new trial based on the Medeiros, the striking resemblance between
Sacco and known strong-arm gunman and gang leader Joe Morelli, an associate of Mederios, and on Thompson’s frontal attack on Federal lawmen
for withholding crucial evidence in the case.
Predictably, Thayer denied a new trial.
The
next day in a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial
the Boston
Herald called for a new trial.
No other major papers followed suit.
Frankfurter published his own forceful argument for a new trial in an
influential article in the Atlantic Monthly.
The
Supreme Judicial Court held another hearing based on the Morelli testimony in
January 1927 and ruled the following April against the appeal, upholding Thayer
once again but, “not denying the truth of the new evidence.” In other words, Sacco and Vanzetti might be
innocent but it made no difference because the judge acted legally.
This demonstration in Paris is typical of those held around the world. |
Outrage
was national and international as nothing now prevented the death sentence from
being carried out.
Biding
their time away in prison, Saco and Vanzetti became used to their new celebrity. They even began to regard their imprisonment as
the work that they must to further their revolutionary cause. They impressed almost everyone who came in
contact with them, ideological friend and foe alike, with their personal gentility and thoughtfulness.
American
and international intellectuals rallied to the cause. John Dos Passos, Dorthy Parker, and Edna St.
Vincent Millay were all arrested in Boston protesting the sentence. Albert
Einstein, George Bernard Shaw
and H. G. Wells all joined in
petitioning the governor for a new trial.
Demonstrations across the world stepped up, and there were some
scattered reports of anarchist violence, particularly in Italy and among the
large Italian immigrant population of Argentina.
On
April 9 Judge Thayer pronounced the death sentence on both men. Bowing to public pressure for clemency Governor Alvan T. Fuller appointed a
three member “blue ribbon” Advisory
Committee to study the case consisting of Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell, President Samuel Wesley Stratton of MIT, and Probate Judge
Robert Grant. Blue bloods Lowell and
Grant were social acquaintances of Thayer and on record as opposing radicals
and being disdainful of immigrants.
Grant had written several novels with ethnic slurs. The only non Brahmin, Stratton, kept his
mouth shut and head down as the council reported that it could find nothing
wrong with Thayer’s conduct of the case, although they could not dispute the
truth of the new evidence. In other
words, the defendants might not actually be guilty, but the verdict should
stand because Thayer had not erred in his rulings.
The
Governor did not issue any commutation orders.
Tension mounted as the execution date entered. The home of one juror was bombed. Twenty thousand people jammed Boston Common for a massive protest
rally on August 15.
Outrage
was national and international as nothing now prevented the death sentence from
being carried out.
Biding
their time away in prison, Saco and Vanzetti became used to their new celebrity. They even began to regard their imprisonment as
the work that they must to further their revolutionary cause. They impressed almost everyone who came in
contact with them, ideological friend and foe alike, with their personal gentility and thoughtfulness.
American
and international intellectuals rallied to the cause. John Dos Passos, Dorthy Parker, and Edna St.
Vincent Millay were all arrested in Boston protesting the sentence. Albert
Einstein, George Bernard Shaw
and H. G. Wells all joined in
petitioning the governor for a new trial.
Demonstrations across the world stepped up, and there were some
scattered reports of anarchist violence, particularly in Italy and among the
large Italian immigrant population of Argentina.
On
April 9 Judge Thayer pronounced the death sentence on both men. Bowing to public pressure for clemency Governor Alvan T. Fuller appointed a
three member “blue ribbon” Advisory
Committee to study the case consisting of Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell, President Samuel Wesley Stratton of MIT, and Probate Judge
Robert Grant. Blue bloods Lowell and
Grant were social acquaintances of Thayer and on record as opposing radicals
and being disdainful of immigrants.
Grant had written several novels with ethnic slurs. The only non Brahmin, Stratton, kept his
mouth shut and head down as the council reported that it could find nothing
wrong with Thayer’s conduct of the case, although they could not dispute the
truth of the new evidence. In other
words, the defendants might not actually be guilty, but the verdict should
stand because Thayer had not erred in his rulings.
The
Governor did not issue any commutation orders.
Tension mounted as the execution date entered. The home of one juror was bombed. Twenty thousand people jammed Boston Common for a massive protest
rally on August 15.
The IWW and its General Defense Committee had been leading members of the broad movement to free Sacco and Vanzetti. |
The
day of execution, Sacco went first. He
quietly sat in the chair then shouted “Viva l;anarchia!” and “Farewell, mia
madre.” The gentle Vanzetti shook hands
with the staff and thanked them for courteous
treatment. He read a statement
proclaiming his innocence and then, at the suggestion of his lawyer William
Thompson said, “I wish to forgive some people for what they are now doing to
me.”
News
of the executions set off sometimes violent demonstrations in Amsterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Geneva, London, Paris, and Tokyo. Strikes erupted
across Latin America. In Boston more than 10,000 viewed the men’s
bodies in open caskets before a massive funeral parade. Police blocked the proposed route passed the State House and there was some fighting
with police. After a brief ceremony at Forest Hill Cemetery the remains were
cremated. The Boston Globe said it was, “one of the most tremendous funerals of
all time.” Later Motion Picture Production Code sensor Will Hayes ordered all newsreel
companies to destroy their footage of the funeral.
The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti were published
in 1928 to world wide acclaim. Columnist Walter Lippmann wrote “If Sacco and Vanzetti were professional
bandits, then historians and biographers who attempt to deduce character from
personal documents might as well shut up shop. By every test that I know of for
judging character, these are the letters of innocent men.” And that summed up the prevailing opinion for
the next forty years.
The
case entered American culture. Dos
Passos, Upton Sinclair, and James T. Farrell drew upon the case in
their novels. Maxwell Anderson’s play Winterset was based on the
case. Musicians around the world wrote
songs. A compilation of American
protest songs by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger was released by Folkways in 1960. Joan
Baez recorded Here’s to You using words from Vanzetti’s letters. Marc
Blitzstein was working on an opera when he died in 1960 which was completed
posthumously by a collaborator and performed at the Metropolitan Opera. Anton
Coppola premiered his opera Sacco and Vanzetti in 2001. There was an Italian film by Giuliano Montaldo in 1971. On the 50th anniversary of the execution in
1977 Governor Michael Dukakis declared Nicola Sacco and Bartomomeo Vanzetti
Memorial Day and said that, they had been unfairly tried and convicted and
that “any disgrace should be forever removed from their names.” In retaliation, Republicans attempted to have the governor censured by the legislature.
Woody Guthrie wrote and performed a whole album of songs about Sacco and Vanzetti. |
The
anniversary resulted in new interest in the case, and by the emergence of revisionist opinion that one or both of
the men were actually guilty of the Braintree robbery. In 1961 Max
Eastman, who had been active on the Sacco
and Vanzetti Defense Committee claimed that in the late 1940’s Carlo Tescla
had told him, “Sacco was guilty but
Vanzetti was innocent.” Because Eastman
had taken a sharp turn to the right and the article in which he made the claim
was published in the Conservative National
Review, the claim was discounted by many.
But other aging anarchists later reported hearing
similar rumors. This was countered by
yet another confession, this time by gangster Frank “Butsy” Morelli, Joe’s
brother. “We whacked them out, we killed those guys in the robbery…These two greaseballs
Sacco and Vanzetti took it on the chin.”
Others revisited the gun evidence.
Some concluded that Sacco’s gun was definitely used in the crime while
others argued that problems with switching the barrels, the repeated
disassembly and assembly of the gun without proper supervision and the ample
opportunity to plant or switch the bullet and cartridges should discount
reliance on the gun to connect Sacco to the crime.
Prevailing
opinion seems to be that it was unlikely either man was actually at the robbery
but that it may have been pulled off by anarchist comrades in conjunction with
local toughs to finance the Galleani group’s bombing campaign. There is also a feeling that the men may have
been connected in at least supporting that campaign.
Reguardless
of guilt or innocence, the trial was repeat with class and ethnic prejudice and
deeply flawed. In the end Sacco and
Vanzetti were just two more victims of the war of the United States on dissent.
My family, who were Italians living in Massachusetts in the 20's, told me about this, but not in such excellent detail as you have here. Thank you for this.
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