Sacco and Vanzetti for a generation of Americans, the names of the two Italian anarchists, are forever linked.  Questions surrounding their 1921 trial for the murders of a paymaster and his guard bitterly divided a nation. As the two convicted men and their supporters struggled on through the appellate courts and clemency petitions to avoid the electric chair, public interest in their case continued to grow. As the end drew near, in August 1927, hundreds of thousands of people –from Boston and New York to London and Buenos Aires—took to the streets in protest of what they perceived to be a massive miscarriage of justice. The murder became a symbol: the forces of the establishment vs. the forces of radical change.

 

There are still two camps: one camp of those believing that Sacco and Vanzetti were the innocent victims of political and economic interests determined to send a message about the rising tide of anarchist violence and another camp of those believing that the trial was fair. In 1961 a ballistic test provided strong evidence that Sacco did indeed fire a fatal bullet on that April day long ago in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Thus Vanzetti might have been innocent!

 

The case against Sacco always appeared stronger than the case against Vanzetti. Sacco had left his cap at the scene of the crime. A medical expert concluded that the hairs in the cap were identical to the hair of Sacco. Although ballistic evidence was not perfected until many years after their execution, the prosecutors tried to show at the trial that the Colt automatic owned by Sacco was the weapon that killed Benardelli.

 

At the trial Sacco and Vanzetti uttered their dogmatic anarchist principles. Sacco uttered in his broken English the following at his trial: “the capitalist class they don’t want our child to go to high school or to college… They don’t want the working class educationed.  They want the working class low all the times, be underfoot and not be up with the head.”

 

Protests in working class districts over the conviction and death sentence of Sacco and Vanzetti occurred throughout the world. The largest rallies took place in France and Italy.

 

In prison, Vanzetti’s facility with English improved remarkably, and his writings grew steadily more interesting. He turned out hundreds of letters, a set of published poems, a brief autobiography, and a translation of Proudhon’s The War and the Peace.

 

The intellectual supporters of Sacco and Vanzetti included: Walter Lippman, John Dewey, Robert La Follette, H.L. Menken, Norman Thomas, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Arthur Slesinger. 

 

The governor of Massachusetts chose Lawrence Lowell, the President of Harvard, to head a commission to investigate the verdict of Sacco and Vanzetti. The report concluded: “On the whole, we are of the opinion that Vanzetti was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Executions

 

Western Union installed eighteen new wires into Boston to handle the demands of the world press. In Charlestown, Massachusetts, bridges were closed and the prison roped off for a mile around. Machine guns were set up on the prison walls and catwalks. Local radio stations in the Boston area announced they would remain on the air past their usual ten o’clock sign offs to broadcast news of the midnight executions.

 

Sacco went first. As a guard secured the straps, Sacco cried out in Italian: “Long live anarchy!”  Vanzetti said his last words: “I am an innocent man.”

 

News of the executions sent hundreds of thousands of protestors into the streets of six continents.  

 

In hindsight there has been significant examination of the evidence. Francis Russell examined the evidence most closely. He felt that Vanzetti was innocent, but Sacco was guilty. The anarchist leader Carlo Tresca supported Russell’s opinion. Giovanni Gambera who was one of four anarchist leaders who planned the original defense of Sacco and Vanzetti told his son that Sacco was guilty and that Vanzetti was innocent.