Sacco and Vanzetti Executed (1927)

Tue Aug 23, 1927

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Image: Bartolomeo Vanzetti (left), handcuffed to Nicola Sacco (right), Dedham, Massachusetts Superior Court, 1923. When this photo was taken, Sacco was on the 23rd day of a hunger strike [Wikipedia]

On this day in 1927, Italian immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed by the U.S. government after they were dubiously convicted of murder, leading to international episodes of protest and violence.

Sacco, born in 1891, was a shoemaker and a night watchman, who migrated to the United States at the age of seventeen. Vanzetti was a fishmonger born on June 11th, 1888. Two men met at a strike in 1917.

After a deadly shoe store robbery in 1919, both Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested. When searched by police, both denied owning any guns, but were found to be holding loaded pistols. Sacco was found to have an Italian passport, anarchist literature, and a loaded .32 Colt Model 1903 automatic pistol. Vanzetti had four 12-gauge shotgun shells and a five-shot nickel-plated .38-caliber Harrington & Richardson revolver. Despite this, both Sacco and Vanzetti had solid alibis for where they were during the murder.

Anti-Italian and anti-anarchist sentiments played a significant role in their trial. Presiding Judge Thayer was an avowed enemy of anarchists. When giving his final statement in 1927, Vanzetti said “I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I am an Italian and indeed I am an Italian…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.”

Sacco and Vanzetti’s arrest, trial, conviction, and execution became an international incident that caused an outrage among people of all political persuasions, not just anarchists. Among their advocates were Harvard law professor and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who wrote that Judge Thayer’s statement was “a farrago of misquotations, misrepresentations, suppressions, and mutilations”,

Despite international advocacy on their behalf, including rallies, sympathy strikes, and pleas for a re-trial, Sacco and Vanzetti’s death sentences were not commuted. Vanzetti, in his final moments, shook hands with guards and thanked them for their kind treatment, read a statement proclaiming his innocence, and finally said, “I wish to forgive some people for what they are now doing to me.” Sacco was next and walked quietly to the electric chair, then shouted “Farewell, mother.”

Following their execution, some radicals, including Italian anarchist Severino Di Giovanni, began a series of bombing campaigns, targeting Judge Thayer, a juror involved in the trial, Wall Street banks, and the American Embassy in Buenos Aires.

On 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”.