Bartolomeo
Vanzetti was born in the Italian town
of Villaffalletto on 11th June, 1888. The son of a farmer, Vanzetti
emigrated to the United States when he was twenty years old. Vanzetti
settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where he worked as a fish peddler.
Vanzetti was shocked by the way working class immigrants were treated
in America and became involved in left-wing politics. He went to anarchist
meetings where he met Nicola Sacco, an
Italian immigrant working in a shoe-factory
in Stoughton, Massachusetts. The two men became friends and often
attended the same political meetings together.
Like many left-wing radicals, Vanzetti and Sacco 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, Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco
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 Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco
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.
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 Nicola
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.
(1)
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, letter to Governor Alvan Fuller, Governor
of Massachusetts (28th 1927)
Now, Governor Fuller, you have told me that almost all those who
have seen me and say to have seen me have identified me. Now to show
you that only such people as witnessed the crime or the passing of
the bandits, or something relating to it, I will tell how Bowles did
identify me. For three or four consecutive days he brought with company
trucks gangs of people from Bridgewater to identify us at the Brockton
Police station, hundreds and hundreds of people. You have no idea
how many people were brought to identify us by Bowles and others.
I remember in the crowd a Chinaman, Japanese, Salvation Army people,
Negroes, and people of every kind and class, even children. Even suppose
that only a third of them came from Bridgewater. You see that there
are a thousand or hundreds of people in a condition to see the crime
or the bandits, and out of these several hundred only one or two persons
said that they seen me and all the others deny it squarely. Out of
the five or six witnesses that perjured voluntarily against me, only
one or two have come to identify me when they come together with these
hundreds of people. And one of these is Mrs. Georgina Brooks, and
I am told she is half blind.
But not to make too long a story, I will also submit to you that these
witnesses from Bridgewater came all together on the corridor at the
trial, which was for them a real picnic. They laugh and jeer at the
Italians that were there, and myself, and there was a clique of them
to create a hostile atmosphere in the court against the general sympathy
that I have by all the people who know me.
Of course your Excellency cannot expect that any of the jury will
admit to you that they made a mistake, or that any witnesses for the
Government will now come forward and throw doubt on their own testimony.
Just think of convicting a foreigner on the testimony of a boy who
said he can tell a man is an Italian from the way he runs, or what
nationality he is by the way he runs. Would that testimony convict
an American before an American jury? He said that he identified me;
he pointed to me and said, "The man in the booth," with
all the despisement at his command, in order to impress the jury against
me.
(2)
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, statement to court after being sentenced
to death (9th April, 1927)
What I say is that I am innocent. Everybody that knows these two
arms knows very well that I did not need to go into the streets and
kill a man or try to take money. I can live by my two hands and live
well. But besides that, I can live even without work with my hands
for other people. I have had plenty of chance to live independently
and to live what the world conceives to be a higher life than to gain
our bread with the sweat of our brow.
My father in Italy is in a good condition. I could have come back
in Italy and he would have welcomed me every time with open arms.
Even if I come back there with not a cent in my pocket, my father
could have give me a position, not to work but to make business, or
to oversee upon the land that he owns. He has wrote me many letters
in that sense, and as another well-to-do relative has wrote me letters
in that sense that I can produce.
Now, I should say that I am not only innocent of all these things,
not only have I never committed a real crime in my life - though some
sins but not crimes - not only have I struggled all my life to eliminate
crimes, the crimes that the official law and the moral law condemns,
but also the crime that the moral law and the official law sanction
and sanctify, the exploitation and the oppression of the man by the
man.
There is the best man I ever cast my eyes upon since I lived, a man
that will last and will grow always more near to and more dear to
the heart of the people, so long as admiration for goodness, for virtues,
and for sacrifice will last. I mean Eugene Victor Debs. He has said
that not even a dog that kills chickens would have found an American
jury disposed to convict it with the proof that the Commonwealth has
produced against us. That man was not with me in Plymouth or with
Sacco where he was on the day of the crime. You can say that it is
arbitrary, what we are saying from him, that he is good and he applied
to the other his goodness, that he is incapable of crime, and he believed
that everybody is incapable of crime.
He knew, and not only he knew, but every man of understanding in the
world, not only in this country but also in other countries, men to
whom we have provided a certain amount of the records of the case
at times, they all know and still stick with us, the flower of mankind
of Europe, the better writers, the greatest thinkers of Europe, have
pleaded in our favor. The scientists, the greatest scientists, the
greatest statesmen of Europe, have pleaded in our favor.
Is it possible that only a few, a handful of men of the jury, only
two or three other men, who would shame their mother for worldly honor
and for earthly fortune; is it possible that they are right against
what the world, for the whole world has said that it is wrong and
I know that it is wrong? If there is one that should know it, if it
is right or if it is wrong, it is I and this man. You see it is seven
years that we are in jail. What we have suffered during these seven
years no human tongue can say, and yet you see me before you, not
trembling, you see me looking you in your eyes straight, not blushing,
not changing color, not ashamed or in fear.
We were tried during a time whose character has now passed into history.
I mean by that, a time when there was a hysteria of resentment and
hate against the people of our principles, against the foreigner,
against slackers, and it seems to me - rather, I am positive of it,
that both you and Mr. Katzmann have done all what it were in your
power in order to work out, in order to agitate still more the passion
of the juror, the prejudice of the juror, against us.
The jury were hating us because we were against the war, and the jury
don't know that it makes any difference between a man that is against
the war because he believes that the war is unjust, because he hate
no country, because he is a cosmopolitan, and a man that is against
the war because he is in favor of the other country that fights against
the country in which he is, and therefore a spy, an enemy, and he
commits any crime in the country in which he is in behalf of the other
country in order to serve the other country. We are not men of that
kind. Nobody can say that we are German spies or spies of any kind.
We believe more now than ever that the war was wrong, and we are against
war more now than ever, and I am glad to be on the doomed scaffold
if I can say to mankind, "Look out; you are in a catacomb of
the flower of mankind. For what? All that they say to you, all that
they have promised to you - it was a lie, it was an illusion, it was
a cheat, it was a fraud, it was a crime. They promised you liberty.
Where is liberty? They promised you prosperity. Where is prosperity?
I never committed a crime in my life - I have never stolen and I have
never killed and I have never spilt blood, and I have fought against
crime, and I have fought and I have sacrificed myself even to eliminate
the crimes that the law and the church legitimate and sanctify.
This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the
most low and misfortunate creature of the earth - I would not wish
to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not
guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a
radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am
an Italian; I have suffered more for my family and for my beloved
than for myself; but I am so convinced to be right that you can only
kill me once but if you could execute me two times, and if I could
be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done
already.
(3)
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, comment to a reporter before his execution
(1927)
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.
Edna
St. Vincent Millay
protesting against the proposed
execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.
(4)
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Justice Denied
in Massachusetts (1927)
Let us abandon then our gardens and go home
And sit in the sitting-room.
Shall the larkspur blossom or the corn grow under the cloud?
Sour to the fruitful seed
Is the cold earth under this cloud,
Fostering quack and weed, we have marched upon but cannot conquer;
We have bent the blades of our hoes against the stalks of them.
Let us go home, and sit in the sitting-room.
Not in our day
Shall the cloud go over and the sun rise as before,
Beneficent upon us
Out of the glittering bay,
And the warm winds be blown inward from the sea
Moving the blades of corn
With a peaceful sound.
Forlorn, forlorn,
Stands the blue hay-rack by the empty mow.
And the petals drop to the ground,
Leaving the tree unfruited.
The sun that warmed our stooping backs and withered the weed uprooted
-
We shall not feel it again.
We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain.
What from the splendid dead
We have inherited -
Furrows sweet to the grain, and the weed subdued -
See now the slug and the mildew plunder.
Evil does not overwhelm
The larkspur and the corn;
We have seen them go under.
Let us sit here, sit still,
Here in the sitting-room until we die;
At the step of Death on the walk, rise and go;
Leaving to our children's children this beautiful doorway,
And this elm,
And a blighted earth to till
With a broken hoe.
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