Bartolomeo Vanzetti

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Nicola Sacco (1891-1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888-1927) were two Italian anarchists, who were arrested, tried, and executed in the United States in the 1920s on charges of murder of a shoe factory paymaster and guard and of robbery, although there was much doubt regarding their guilt even at the time of their trial and they have since been absolved of the crime after another man admitted to the crime in 1925. It is thought that the police, prosecutors, judge and jury were prejudiced by the fact that Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants with an imperfect grasp of the English language and by their radical politics. Judge Webster Thayer, who heard the case, described the two as 'anarchist bastards'[1]. They were electrocuted in Massachusetts in 1927. Sacco was a shoe-maker, Vanzetti a fish seller.

It was a period of intense fear of communism in American history, the Red Scare of 1919 to 1920. Neither Sacco nor Vanzetti had any previous criminal record, nor did they consider themselves communists, but they were known to the authorities as radical militants who had been widely involved in labor strikes, political agitation, and anti-war propaganda. Sacco and Vanzetti believed themselves to be victims of social and political prejudice as outlined above, and as Vanzetti said in his last speech to Judge Webster Thayer:

I would not wish to a dog or 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. But my conviction is that I have suffered for things that I am 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... (Vanzetti spoke on 19 April, 1927, in Dedham, Massachusetts, where their case was heard.[1])

Many famous intellectuals, including Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Bertrand Russell, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, campaigned for a retrial but were unsuccessful. On August 23, 1927, after a seven year trial, the two men were sent to the electric chair. The execution sparked riots in London, Paris and Germany.

The first inside confirmation of Sacco's guilt was provided in 1941 when anarchist leader Carlo Tresca told Max Eastman, "Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was innocent." Eastman's published an article recounting his conversation with Tresca in National Review in 1961. Later, others would confirm being told the same information by Tresca.

On the August 23, 1977, exactly fifty years later, Governor of Massachusetts Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation absolving the two men of the crime, saying that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names".