Nicola
Sacco was born in the Italian town of
Torremaggiore on 22nd April, 1891. He emigrated to the United States
when he was seventeen.
Sacco found work in a shoe factory in Stoughton, Massachusetts. He
got married and started a family. Sacco also became involved in left-wing
politics and at one anarchist gathering
met Bartolomeo Vanzetti, an Italian
immigrant working as a fish peddler in Plymouth. The two men became
friends and often attended the same political meetings together.
Like many left-wing radicals, Sacco and Vanzetti were opposed to the
First World War. They took part in protest meetings
and in 1917, when the United States entered the war, they fled together
to Mexico in order to avoid being conscripted into the United
States Army. When the war was over the two men returned to the
United States.
On 5th May, 1920, Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
were arrested and interviewed about the murders of Frederick Parmenter
and Alessandro Berardelli, in South Braintree. The men had been killed
while carrying two boxes containing the payroll of a shoe factory.
After Parmenter and Berardelli were shot dead, the two robbers took
the $15,000 and got into a car containing several other men, and driven
away.
Several eyewitnesses claimed that the robbers looked Italian. A large
number of Italian immigrants were questioned but eventually the authorities
decided to charge Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
with the murders. Although the two men did not have criminal records,
it was argued that they had committed the robbery to acquire funds
for their anarchist political campaign.
The trial started on 21st May, 1921. The main evidence against the
men was that they were both carrying a gun when arrested. Some people
who saw the crime taking place identified Vanzetti and Sacco as the
robbers. Others disagreed and both men had good alibis. Vanzetti was
selling fish in Plymouth while Sacco was in Boston
with his wife having his photograph taken. The prosecution made a
great deal of the fact that all those called to provide evidence to
support these alibis were Italian immigrants.
Photograph
of the Sacco family taken in
Boston on the day the murders took place.
Vanzetti
and Sacco were disadvantaged by not having a full grasp of the English
language. It was clear from some of the answers they gave in court
that they had misunderstood the question. During the trial the prosecution
emphasized the men's radical political beliefs. Vanzetti and Sacco
were also accused of unpatriotic behaviour by fleeing to Mexico during
the First World War. The trial lasted seven
weeks and on 14th July, 1921, both men were found guilty of first
degree murder and sentenced to death.
The Sacco and Vanzetti Case received a
great deal of publicity. Many observers believed that their conviction
resulted from prejudice against them as Italian immigrants and because
they held radical political beliefs. The case resulted in anti-US
demonstrations in several European countries and at one of these in
Paris, a bomb exploded killing twenty people.
In 1925 Celestino Madeiros, a Portuguese
immigrant, confessed to being a member of the gang that killed Frederick
Parmenter and Alessandro Berardelli. He also named the four other
men, Joe, Fred, Pasquale and Mike Morelli, who had taken part in the
robbery. The Morelli brothers were well-known criminals who had carried
out similar robberies in area of Massachusetts. However, the authorities
refused to investigate the confession made by Madeiros.
Many leading writers and artists such as John
Dos Passos, Alice Hamilton, Paul
Kellog, Jane Addams, Upton
Sinclair, Dorothy Parker, Ben
Shahn, Edna St. Vincent Millay, John
Howard Lawson, Floyd Dell, George
Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells became involved
in a campaign to obtain a retrial. Although Webster Thayer, the original
judge, was officially criticised for his conduct at the trial, the
authorities refused to overrule the decision to execute the men.
By the summer of 1927 it became clear that Sacco and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti would be executed. Vanzetti commented to a journalist:
"If it had not been for this thing, I might have lived out my
life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died,
unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our
career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such
work for tolerance, justice, for man's understanding of man, as now
we do by accident. Our words - our lives - our pains - nothing! The
taking of our lives - lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler
- all! That last moment belong to us - that agony is our triumph.
On 23rd August 1927, the day of execution, over 250,000 people took
part in a silent demonstration in Boston.
Fifty years later, on 23rd August, 1977, Michael
Dukakis, the Governor of Massachusetts, issued a proclamation,
effectively absolving the two men of the crime.
Spencer
Sacco, grandson of Nicola Sacco
receiving proclamation from Michael Dukakis
(1)
Nicola Sacco, statement to court after being sentenced
to death (9th April, 1927)
I am no orator. It is not very familiar with me the English language,
and as I know, as my friend has told me, my comrade Vanzetti will
speak more long, so I thought to give him the chance.
I never knew, never heard, even read in history anything so cruel
as this Court. After seven years prosecuting they still consider us
guilty. And these gentle people here are arrayed with us in this court
today.
I know the sentence will be between two classes, the oppressed class
and the rich class, and there will be always collision between one
and the other. We fraternize the people with the books, with the literature.
You persecute the people, tyrannize them and kill them. We try the
education of people always. You try to put a path between us and some
other nationality that hates each other. That is why I am here today
on this bench, for having been of the oppressed class. Well, you are
the oppressor.
You know it, Judge Thayer - you know all my life, you know why I have
been here, and after seven years that you have been persecuting me
and my poor wife, and you still today sentence us to death. I would
like to tell all my life, but what is the use? You know all about
what I say before, that is, my comrade, will be talking, because he
is more familiar with the language, and I will give him a chance.
You forget all this population that has been with us for seven years,
to sympathize and give us all their energy and all their kindness.
You do not care for them. Among that peoples and the comrades and
the working class there is a big legion of intellectual people which
have been with us for seven years, to not commit the iniquitous sentence,
but still the Court goes ahead. And I want to thank you all, you peoples,
my comrades who have been with me for seven years, with the Sacco
Vanzetti case, and I will give my friend a chance.
(2)
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, comments
about Nicola Sacco (9th April, 1927)
Sacco is a worker from his boyhood, a skilled worker lover of
work, with a good job and pay, a bank account, a good and lovely wife,
two beautiful children and a neat little home at the verge of a wood,
near a brook. Sacco is a heart, a faith, a character, a man; a man
lover of nature and of mankind. A man who gave all, who sacrifice
all to the cause of Liberty and to his love for mankind; money, rest,
mundane ambitions, his own wife, his children, himself and his own
life. Sacco has never dreamt to steal, never to assassinate. He and
I have never brought a morsel of bread to our mouths, from our childhood
to today--which has not been gained by the sweat of our brows. Never.
His people also are in good position and of good reputation.
Oh, yes, I may be more witfull, as some have put it, I am a better
babbler than he is, but many, many times in hearing his heartful voice
ringing a faith sublime, in considering his supreme sacrifice, remembering
his heroism I felt small small at the presence of his greatness and
found myself compelled to fight back from my eyes the tears, and quench
my heart troubling to my throat to not weep before him--this man called
thief and assassin and doomed. But Sacco's name will live in the hearts
of the people and in their gratitude when Katzmann's and yours bones
will be dispersed by time, when your name, his name, your laws, institutions,
and your false god are but a deem remembering of a cursed past in
which man was wolf to the man.
(3)
Michael Dukakis, Governor of Massachusetts,
proclamation on the Sacco and Vanzetti case (23rd August, 1977)
Today is the Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Memorial Day.
The atmosphere of their trial and appeals were permeated by prejudice
against foreigners and hostility toward unorthodox political views.
The conduct of many of the officials involved in the case shed serious
doubt on their willingness and ability to conduct the prosecution
and trial fairly and impartially. Simple decency and compassion, as
well as respect for truth and an enduring commitment to our nation's
highest ideals, require that the fate of Sacco and Vanzetti be pondered
by all who cherish tolerance, justice and human understanding.
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