The two men shackled together,
The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial, 2009
The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial, 2009
by Moshik Temkin.
Nicola Sacco (1891–1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888–1927) arrived from Italy in 1908 and settled in Boston, with its large immigrant community that provided workers for manufacturing industries. Sacco from Foggia was a shoe-maker; Vanzetti from Cuneo sold fish.
Each experienced prejudice against impoverished Italian immigrants and each joined the loose anarchist community around Luigi Galleani’s Subversive Chronicle. During the suppression of radicals that began during WW1, Galleani’s men were targeted by the U.S Bureau of Immigration. Dozens were deported! Subversive Chronicle was banned by the US Mail for advocating anarchy.
The two did not become close mates until a 1917 strike. Neither had a criminal record, but both were known to local police for being strike supporters of the unemployed. So they went with others to Mexico towards the end of WW1, perhaps to avoid conscription. Or perhaps to get to Russia to join the Revolution. In either case, when they returned to the US post-war, they found their revolutionary mates had been driven underground.
In Apr 1920 an armed gang attacked a payload going to a shoe company in Braintree Ma. The paymaster and security guard were shot dead, and the cash was stolen. Police set a trap for suspects, using an Oakland car from the robbery. Sacco and Vanzetti accompanied other anarchists, trying to reclaim the car from a garage. When the other suspects escaped, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested on a tram, each legally carrying a gun.
Arrested in May 1920, it was clear that a fair trial would be almost impossible, with prosecutors signalling that they would try the men mainly on their anarchism.
Nicola Sacco (1891–1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888–1927) arrived from Italy in 1908 and settled in Boston, with its large immigrant community that provided workers for manufacturing industries. Sacco from Foggia was a shoe-maker; Vanzetti from Cuneo sold fish.
Each experienced prejudice against impoverished Italian immigrants and each joined the loose anarchist community around Luigi Galleani’s Subversive Chronicle. During the suppression of radicals that began during WW1, Galleani’s men were targeted by the U.S Bureau of Immigration. Dozens were deported! Subversive Chronicle was banned by the US Mail for advocating anarchy.
The two did not become close mates until a 1917 strike. Neither had a criminal record, but both were known to local police for being strike supporters of the unemployed. So they went with others to Mexico towards the end of WW1, perhaps to avoid conscription. Or perhaps to get to Russia to join the Revolution. In either case, when they returned to the US post-war, they found their revolutionary mates had been driven underground.
In Apr 1920 an armed gang attacked a payload going to a shoe company in Braintree Ma. The paymaster and security guard were shot dead, and the cash was stolen. Police set a trap for suspects, using an Oakland car from the robbery. Sacco and Vanzetti accompanied other anarchists, trying to reclaim the car from a garage. When the other suspects escaped, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested on a tram, each legally carrying a gun.
Arrested in May 1920, it was clear that a fair trial would be almost impossible, with prosecutors signalling that they would try the men mainly on their anarchism.
Italian anarchist Carlo Tresca had been a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World/IWW. He had already led in the landmark Lawrence Strike of 1912 and had organised the defence of other indicted Italians, leading to their acquittals. Tresca organised mass support for Sacco and Vanzetti via newspapers, posters and demonstrations. And he brought in the successful IWW lawyer from the Lawrence cases, Fred Moore. To finance it all, Tesco mobilised the IWW’s General Defence Committee which raised funds nationwide. Meanwhile Tresca’s colleague Elizabeth Gurley Flynn mobilised the International Labour defence.
According to Prof Moshik Temkin’s 2009 book, The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial, these impoverished Italian immigrants were fed up with their exploitation under American capitalism. So in the 1920s, the US government was actively hunting anarchists! And while the 2 men were in prison, restricted immigration quotas became law! But if the justice system wanted to make an example of Sacco and Vanzetti, it ended up making them martyrs. During their 6 years on Death Row, these thinkers’ letters persuaded people of their innocence.
According to Prof Moshik Temkin’s 2009 book, The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial, these impoverished Italian immigrants were fed up with their exploitation under American capitalism. So in the 1920s, the US government was actively hunting anarchists! And while the 2 men were in prison, restricted immigration quotas became law! But if the justice system wanted to make an example of Sacco and Vanzetti, it ended up making them martyrs. During their 6 years on Death Row, these thinkers’ letters persuaded people of their innocence.
Fred 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, to establish that their arrest and prosecution stemmed from their radicalism. He exposed the prosecution’s hidden motive —to assist the Federal authorities in suppressing Italian anarchism.
Presiding Judge Webster Thayer barred new evidence and referred to the defendants as anarchist bastards. 3 key prosecution witnesses stated that they'd been coerced into identifying Sacco at the scene of the crime, but when confronted, they denied any coercion. These conflicting accounts should have cast doubt on the testimony. Ditto the fact that the stolen money was never recovered.
Public opinion swung behind Sacco and Vanzetti, as it became more evident that they were being railroaded. Nonetheless after a 6 weeks trial, the jury found Sacco and Vanzetti guilty of robbery & murder in Jul 1921 , based largely on circumstantial evidence.
In 1924’s appeal, Fred Moore was replaced as chief defence council by William Thompson, respected and connected Boston lawyer. The courtroom strategy swung back to legal technicalities. In May 1926 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled, not on the evidence but on the judge’s conduct of the trial, that there had been no error.
As Thompson filed new appeals, support for the men continued to grow in radical, socialist and then in respectable liberal circles. Harvard law Prof Felix Frankfurter rallied legal opinion behind the Italians. He published his case for a new trial in the influential Atlantic Monthly.
After the men were condemned on shaky testimony and doctored physical evidence, the Supreme Judicial Court held another hearing based on new evidence from gang-leader Joe Morelli. Again they ruled against the appeal, not denying the truth of the new evidence but upholding Judge Thayer. Despite 7 appeals, their request for new trial was rejected and Judge Thayer confirmed the death sentences.
Newpaper Troy, NY
11th April 1927
After the 1927 execution, 10,000+ viewed the men’s bodies in open caskets before the funeral parade, all of it filmed. Police blocked the route past Boston’s State House, then a service at Forest Hill Cemetery and cremation. Later, Motion Picture Production Code sensor Will Hayes ordered all newsreel companies to destroy their funeral footage.
Outrage took over! The killings set off demonstrations in Amsterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Geneva, London, Paris and Tokyo. Strikes erupted across Latin America. The executions radicalised intellectuals, especially when The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti were published in 1928. Writers HG Wells and George Bernard Shaw denounced the frame-up. Nobel Prize writer Anatole France, of Dreyfus Affair defence fame, wrote an Appeal to the American People. Upton Sinclair wrote a novel about the meat-packing industry, and Ben Shahn memorialised them in 23 famous images in 1931-2. Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez wrote protest songs.
Conclusion
Guilt of the immigrant Italian anarchists, executed in Aug 1927, was irrelevant; their deeply flawed trial had reflected racist prejudice. For a decade, leftist organisations’ efforts went into raising money for other martyrs’ legal defence and for the support of the families of gaoled militants. Similar patterns happened after: 1950s McCarthyite suppression, 1960s anti-war movement and early 70’s militant Black movement. Capital punishment was always barbaric, but even more so in 1927.
.png)
.JPG)
.png)
18 comments:
Boa noite Hels. Parabéns pela excelente matéria. Aula de história é maravilhosa.
Thanks for inviting me to read your article, Helen. Apart from the anti migrant feeling in the police and community, the rot set in with the presiding Judge Thayer. Permanently.
I never heard of these people. Although I am still in disbelief what happen in my country.
Coffee is on and stay safe
Luiz
this was a terrible series of court cases in the USA and should have taught them a lot about hatred and fear of migrants, and of workers' unionism. But I imagine that many countries had prejudiced police and court systems, and faced the same dilemmas.
Look, for example, at the riots and dangers that faced immigrant workers in Australia at the same time:
https://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/2015/01/brisbane-1919-racist-red-flag-riots.html
Student
I noted that presiding Judge Webster Thayer was rigidly anti-migrant; he barred new evidence from being presented in court and referred to the Italian defendants as anarchist bastards. But you are right... it became worse.
When the appeals and new evidence went to the Supreme Judicial Court, the Supreme Court ruled against the appeal, not denying the truth of the new evidence but upholding Judge Thayer's right to making the final decision. All requests for new trials with new judges were rejected!! Judge Thayer confirmed his own death sentence orders!!
Hello Hels, So many trials ended up punishing the crime or a group of people rather then fairly debating the guilt of the accused. Often in a vicious murder, the first person arrested is convicted mainly out of a desire to punish the crime and not let someone "get away with it" despite the often poor quality of the evidence.
Conversely, sometimes a trial is technically fair, but the mob public has made up its own mind, and will storm and riot to show their displeasure with the verdict. It is not only one kind of people who can make an unruly mob. Of course, it is an extra disgrace when it is judges, shown officials and juries who act unfairly or unprincipled.
Either way, vicious and prejudiced mob opinion ends up ruling.
--Jim
Fabulous blog
peppylady
even historians are "protected" from horrible events in their own nation's history. So I am not at all surprised that you hadn't heard of Sacco, Vanzetti, their colleagues, police, lawyers, newspaper men etc that were totally involved between 1920-27.
I studied history for 6 years in high school and 4 years at uni, and found only late in my studies that Britain didn't ban slavery until 1833. Shameful episodes have to be rigorously dug up, decades later.
Parnassus
I suppose I can agree that a speedy resolution and rapid justice were seen as the vital issues. And this would be particularly true when the massacres of WW1 were just over, or the country was facing a vast Depression, or the nation was falling apart on racist lines.
But some elements were unforgivable eg the circumstantial and doctored evidence, changing witness reports, racist police and judicial views etc. Especially when capital punishment was clearly tolerated.
Rajani
many thanks and Happy New Year to you.
Which part of history and art history are you most interested in?
World wide protests over the executions and I knew nothing about it. I remember active anarchists in Melbourne in the 1980s but not at all in the last couple of decades.
Andrew
the crisis was so great that Prof Temkin reiterated that the full national and international scope of the Sacco-Vanzetti affair made the two men the centre of a global cause célèbre back then! Even more significantly, he wrote that the crisis transformed America’s relationship with the world.
That might have been true in 1927 and after, but not now.
Hi Hels - I hadn't heard of these men, nor the background ... though certainly can believe what happened - sad, but true. Really interesting to be made aware of - thank you - Hilary
Hilary
Judge Thayer wrote of Vanzetti: "This man, although he may not have actually committed the crime attributed to him, is nevertheless morally culpable, because he is the enemy of our existing institutions".
Had these two Italian immigrants been deported back to Italy for their political beliefs, as had others during the suppression of radicals that began in WW1, nobody would have known about the case. But instead of being tried for their political beliefs, Sacco and Vanzetti were hanged for murders they did not commit. This was the most obscene part.
Thanks for the share.
News app
It is an important story, isn't it, even 100 years after the events occurred. Why do you think most readers, even historically aware readers, don't know much about Sacco and Vanzetti?
Hi Hels!
Two items came to my attention. Funny how these things seem to show up as oddly timed coincidences.
The first is a very interesting op-ed by Rania Batrice which appeared in the Boston Globe on Thursday. In it she argues that the recent right-wing attack on the US capitol has given rise to applying the word "terrorist" to various groups and organizations. She points out: "The framework of terrorism has often been used to target peaceful political activity. This is about the slippery slope."
And the second item is a brief "this moment in history" account of Boston's "Great Molasses Disaster" which occurred on January 15, 1919 when a huge storage tank of molasses burst causing great death and destruction in Boston's immigrant North End neighborhood. This was just about a year prior to the Sacco and Vanzetti robbery, and the article makes mention of the owner of the molasses tank attempting to blame the event on the action of "anarchists."
I'm not sure whether these is really an over-arching historical continuity to all of this, but I thought you might find it intellectually interesting.
Will
Many thanks. I carefully read your story of the Great Molasses Disaster in Boston, and was totally fascinated by both the timing (1919) and the blame attributed to anarchists. Now I will have to consider all the other bombs and crises in the USA after the Russian Revolution and the end of WW1, and expand the emerging pattern to include the Boston catastrophe.
Post a Comment