Background
Vanzetti, whose parents, Battista and Giovanna Vanzetti, were of well-to-do farming stock, was born at Villafalletto, province of Cuneo, Piedmont, and, following his mother's death, emigrated to New York in June 1908.
(ll testamento umano e politico di un uomo semplice e inno...)
ll testamento umano e politico di un uomo semplice e innocente, ingiustamente condannato da un'ottusa Corte di Giustizia degli Stati Uniti il 23 agosto 1927 insieme al compagno Nicola Sacco. La vicenda di Sacco e Vanzetti, durata per sette anni dal 1920 fino al triste epilogo, fece il giro del mondo, indignò l'opinione pubblica di tutte le nazioni democratiche, suscitò un movimento di solidarietà come non si era mai visto fino ad allora. Solamente nel 1977, con cinquanta anni di colpevole ritardo, il Governatore del Massachusets Dukakis, decretò che il processo non era stato condotto correttamente poichè influenzato dal pregiudizio razziale verso gli immigrati e dal pregiudizio politico verso gli anarchici; da quel momento il 23 agosto diventò il "Sacco and Vanzetti day". "Volli un tetto per ogni famiglia, un pane per ogni bocca, un'educazione per ogni cuore, la luce per ogni intelletto" (B. Vanzetti) "Non augurerei a un cane o a un serpente, alla più miserevole e sfortunata creatura della terra, ciò che ho avuto a soffrire per colpe che non ho commesso. Ma la mia convinzione è un'altra: che ho sofferto per colpe che ho effettivamente commesso. Sto soffrendo perché sono un radicale, e in effetti io sono un radicale; ho sofferto perché sono un italiano, e in effetti io sono un italiano; ho sofferto di più per la mia famiglia e per i miei cari che per me stesso; ma sono tanto convinto di essere nel giusto che se voi aveste il potere di ammazzarmi due volte, e per due volte io potessi rinascere, vivrei di nuovo per fare esattamente ciò che ho fatto finora" (B. Vanzetti)
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(Commemorating the eightieth anniversary of Sacco and Vanz...)
Commemorating the eightieth anniversary of Sacco and Vanzetti's execution- with a new cover and new foreword Electrocuted in 1927 for the murder of two guards in Massachusetts, the Italian- American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti defied the verdict against them, maintaining their innocence to the end. Whether they were guilty continues to be the subject of debate today. First published in 1928, Sacco and Vanzetti's letters represent one of the great personal documents of the twentieth century: a volume of primary source material as famous for the splendor of its impassioned prose as for the brilliant light it sheds on the characters of the two dedicated anarchists who became the focus of worldwide attention. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
https://www.amazon.com/Letters-Sacco-Vanzetti-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143105078?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0143105078
author communist radical Philosophical anarchist writer socialist
Vanzetti, whose parents, Battista and Giovanna Vanzetti, were of well-to-do farming stock, was born at Villafalletto, province of Cuneo, Piedmont, and, following his mother's death, emigrated to New York in June 1908.
Vanzetti immigrated to the United States at the age of twenty and sampled a variety of employments in different parts of the country before 1915, when he settled in Plymouth, Massachussets. There he remained, save for a visit to Mexico in 1917-18 to avoid the draft, and was at the time of his arrest in 1920 engaged as a fish peddler.
In the winter of 1919-20 a wave of anti-radicalism swept the United States.
In Massachusetts several members of the Galleani group were deported or imprisoned and the press was full of the machinations of the "Reds. " At the height of this campaign, on April 15, 1920, the paymaster and guard of a shoe factory were shot dead in the main street of South Braintree, Massachussets, and robbed of some $16, 000.
The shots were fired by two men of foreign appearance who were immediately driven away in a car by their accomplices.
It was with this brutal crime that Sacco and Vanzetti, arrested on May 5, were charged.
Their joint trial began on May 31, 1921, at Dedham, before Judge Webster Thayer.
No money had been traced to the defendants nor was there any evidence that either of them had ever been in possession of the car in which the murderers made their escape. The prosecution relied on two main points: (1) evidence of eye-witnesses identifying the defendants as participants in the crime; (2) the fact that on arrest the defendants made to the police false statements as to their movements and circumstances, from which a guilty consciousness of murder might be inferred. The defence sought to meet the first of these points by the evidence of the defendants themselves and of numerous other witnesses placing them elsewhere at the time of the crime. To the second it replied that the nervousness and admitted falsehoods of the defendants were explained by their consciousness, not of murder, but of radicalism and their fear of sharing the fate of some of their fellow radicals. At the time of their arrest they were actually obtaining a car in order to dispose of incriminating Socialist literature in their possession.
On July 14, both defendants were found guilty of murder in the first degree. After the trial, applications for a re-hearing were made to Judge Thayer, partly on the ground of fresh evidence, partly on the ground that the question of radicalism, unavoidably introduced by the defence, had been improperly capitalized by the prosecution and the presiding judge. It was claimed that the district attorney's cross examination, ostensibly directed to disprove, was really calculated to emphasize and exploit the defendants' evasion of military service and their unpopular opinions for the double purpose of prejudicing them in the eyes of the jury or, if they were acquitted, of providing the federal agents with materials for a deportation order against them. These motions were all denied and the supreme court of Massachusetts, whose power of review is limited to questions of law, refused to intervene.
Meanwhile, the spontaneous confession in 1925 of a condemned criminal named Madeiros (or Medeiros) exonerating the defendants had led to the discovery (1926) of much corroborative detail pointing to the theory that the murder was the work of a gang of professional bandits from Providence, R. I. Sacco and Vanzetti were now defended by a prominent and conservative Boston lawyer, William G. Thompson, whose courageous, powerful, and disinterested presentation of their case aroused doubts of their guilt in many minds.
Meetings of protest took place all over the world and such famous names as Mazaryk, Einstein, Anatole France, and Romain Rolland were associated with petitions for the men's release.
In Massachusetts, however, opinion remained predominantly hostile.
Nevertheless, so insistent was the demand for an impartial review that on June 1, 1927, Governer Alvan T. Fuller of Massachusetts announced the appointment of an advisory committee to report to him on the fairness of the trial and the justification for the conviction. (The death sentence had been imposed on April 9, 1927. )
The members of this committee were President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University, President Samuel W. Stratton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a former probate judge, Robert Grant.
But the committee's report, published a few days later (New York Times, August 7, 1927), was at once the object of serious and detailed criticism, particularly in regard to its treatment of the charge of prejudice against Judge Thayer.
The defence unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the federal courts to intervene and demonstrations in favor of the defendants continued both at home and abroad.
As the day fixed for the executions drew nearer, Boston was placed under something resembling martial law and on Sunday, August 21, 1927, over 150 persons were arrested for picketing near the State House.
After midnight of August, 22, that is, in the first hours of August 23, both defendants were electrocuted.
An opinion as to the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti must depend on the consideration of a mass of detail which it is impossible to summarize in this article. Communists came to value the case as a proof of their thesis that no "Capitalist" society can afford justice to its opponents in the class war. Others, not subscribing to this general proposition, felt grave misgivings in the particular instance.
(Commemorating the eightieth anniversary of Sacco and Vanz...)
(ll testamento umano e politico di un uomo semplice e inno...)
To the native New England element (in Massachusetts) Sacco and Vanzetti were aliens and agitators; to the Catholics they were renegades in religion.
Both elements were united to resent outside intervention with local institutions, and to citizens the vindication of those institutions appeared of greater importance than the guilt or innocence of the accused.
Vanzetti, came under the influence of Luigi Galleani, a philosophical anarchist of the school of Blake and Tolstoy.
To the second it replied that the nervousness and admitted falsehoods of the defendants were explained by their consciousness, not of murder, but of radicalism and their fear of sharing the fate of some of their fellow radicals.
At the time of his arrest he was actually obtaining a car in order to dispose of incriminating Socialist literature in his possession.
On Aug. 3 the Governor, who had meanwhile conducted his own inquiry, announced that both he and the advisory committee were unanimous in finding the trial fair and the defendants guilty.
During his long imprisonment Vanzetti had devoted himself to reading and improving his command of English; and a number of his letters written during this period have been published. Unless they can be thought to have been deliberately concocted for the purpose, these letters may be thought to provide some psychological confirmation of the material evidence against his having committed a murder for profit. For they display him as a man of considerable native intelligence striving after education and as an idealist with an unexpected vein of realistic humor. Throughout his imprisonment he was supported by the belief, eloquently expressed in a passage from his statement on receiving sentence, that he was promoting the cause he had at heart: "Now we are not a failure. . Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for joostice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by an 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 belongs to us--that agony is our triumph" (Ehrmann, post, p. 245).
Being of a reflective temperament and a roving disposition, Vanzetti never married.