Sacco and Vanzetti

This article is part of a series on
Anarchism in the United States
History Cincinnati Time Store Most–Grottkau debate Haymarket affair Homestead strike Assassination of William McKinley Immigration Act of 1903 Ferrer Center and Colony Immigration Act of 1918 First Red Scare 1919 bombings Palmer Raids Sacco and Vanzetti Libertarian Book Club and League Counterculture of the 1960s Protests of 1968 Battle of Seattle Occupy Wall Street Qilombo Capitol Hill Occupied Protest
People Abbott Alston Andrews Appleton Balagoon Bari Berkman Best Biehl Bookchin Bushnell Carson Chomsky Cleyre Cornell Czologsz Day Dixon Emerson Ervin Fischer Goldman Goodman Graeber Greene Hahnel Haldeman-Julius Heywood (Angela) Heywood (Ezra) Hill Hoffman Holmes Ingalls Kaczynski Labadie Lingg Lloyd Lum Magón Milstein Most Parsons Perlman Sale Schwab Solanas Spooner Thoreau Tucker Waisbrooker Walker Warren Wilson Winn Wolff Zerzan Zinn
Organizations Active ABC No Rio Anarcho-Syndicalist Review Anti-Racist Action Beehive Design Collective Catholic Worker Movement Common Ground Collective CrimethInc. Curious George Brigade Earth Liberation Front Industrial Workers of the World Institute for Anarchist Studies Institute for Social Ecology Kate Sharpley Library Labadie Collection Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council MOVE Portland Anarchist Road Care Profane Existence Red Emma's Ruckus Society Defunct Cincinnati Time Store Don't Just Vote, Get Active Ferrer Center and Colony George Jackson Brigade Institute for Applied Autonomy International Working People's Association Libertarian Book Club and League New England Non-Resistance Society Qilombo Spanish Camp Tenacious Unicorn Ranch Union of Russian Workers Up Against the Wall Motherfucker Vanguard Group Why? Group Youth International Party
Media Publications AK Press Autonomedia The Blast Catholic Worker Cronaca Sovversiva Fifth Estate Free Society Freiheit Golos Truda Liberty Loompanics Mother Earth PM Press Regeneración Vanguard The Word Works Resistance to Civil Government (1849) To the Workingmen of America (1883) Anarchism and Other Essays (1910) Now and After (1929) In Defense of Anarchism (1970) Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971) The Abolition of Work (1986) From Bakunin to Lacan (2001) Understanding Power (2002) Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (2004) Direct Action: An Ethnography (2009)
Related topics American Left Anarchism History in Puerto Rico Anarchist economics Anarcho-capitalism Anarcho-pacifism Autarchism Chicago idea Galleanisti Green anarchism Individualist anarchism in the United States Labor history of the United States Libertarianism in the U.S. Minarchism Outline of anarchism Philosophical anarchism Politics of the United States Socialism in the U.S.
Anarchism portal  Libertarianism portal  United States portal
v t e

Nicola Sacco (pronounced [niˈkɔːla ˈsakko]; April 22, 1891 – August 23, 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (pronounced [bartoloˈmɛo vanˈtsetti, -ˈdzet-]; June 11, 1888 – August 23, 1927) were Italian immigrants and anarchists who were controversially convicted of murdering Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter, a guard and a paymaster, during the April 15, 1920, armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts, United States. Seven years later, they were executed in the electric chair at Charlestown State Prison.

After a few hours' deliberation on July 14, 1921, the jury convicted Sacco and Vanzetti of first-degree murder and they were sentenced to death by the trial judge. Anti-Italianism, anti-immigrant, and anti-anarchist bias were suspected as having heavily influenced the verdict. A series of appeals followed, funded largely by the private Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee. The appeals were based on recanted testimony, conflicting ballistics evidence, a prejudicial pretrial statement by the jury foreman, and a confession by an alleged participant in the robbery. All appeals were denied by trial judge Webster Thayer and also later denied by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. By 1926, the case had drawn worldwide attention. As details of the trial and the men's suspected innocence became known, Sacco and Vanzetti became the center of one of the largest causes célèbres in modern history. In 1927, protests on their behalf were held in every major city in North America and Europe, as well as in Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Montevideo, Johannesburg, and Auckland.^[1]

Celebrated writers, artists, and academics pleaded for their pardon or for a new trial. Harvard law professor and future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter argued for their innocence in a widely read Atlantic Monthly article that was later published in book form.^[2] Even the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was convinced of their innocence and attempted to pressure American authorities to have them released.^[3][4] The two were scheduled to die in April 1927, accelerating the outcry. Responding to a massive influx of telegrams urging their pardon, Massachusetts governor Alvan T. Fuller appointed a three-man commission to investigate the case. After weeks of secret deliberation that included interviews with the judge, lawyers, and several witnesses, the commission upheld the verdict. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in the electric chair just after midnight on August 23, 1927.^[5]

Investigations in the aftermath of the executions continued throughout the 1930s and '40s. The publication of the men's letters, containing eloquent professions of innocence, intensified the public's belief in their wrongful execution. However, a ballistic test performed in 1961 proved that the pistol found on Sacco was indeed used to commit the murders.^[6] On August 23, 1977—the 50th anniversary of the executions—Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted and that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names".^[7][8]