In Search Of Sacco And Vanzetti

An in-depth reexamination with startling new insights into the controversial case

It was a bold and brutal crime--robbery and murder in broad daylight on the streets of South Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1920. Tried for the crime and convicted, two Italian-born laborers, anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, went to the electric chair in 1927, professing their innocence. Journalist Susan Tejada has spent years investigating the case, sifting through diaries and police reports and interviewing descendants of major figures. She discovers little-known facts about Sacco, Vanzetti, and their supporters, and develops a tantalizing theory about how a doomed insider may have been coerced into helping professional criminals plan the heist. Tejada's close-up view of the case allows readers to see those involved as individual personalities. She also paints a fascinating portrait of a bygone era: Providence gangsters and Boston Brahmins; nighttime raids and midnight bombings; and immigration, unionism, draft dodging, and violent anarchism in the turbulent early years of the twentieth century. In many ways this is as much a cultural history as a true-crime mystery or courtroom drama. Because the case played out against a background of domestic terrorism, in a time that echoes our own, we have a new appreciation of the potential connection between fear and the erosion of civil liberties and miscarriages of justice.

Documents the infamous 1927 trial and execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, from the anarchist bombings in Washington, D.C., for which they may have been wrongfully convicted to the fierce public debates that have subsequently occurred as a result of the case.

From John Florio and Emmy Award-winning writer Ouisie Shapiro comes a monumental YA nonfiction book about the heartbreaking case of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants who were wrongfully executed for murder. In the early 1920s, a Red Scare gripped America. Many of those targeted were Italians, Eastern Europeans, and other immigrants. When an armed robbery resulting in the death of two people broke headlines in Massachusetts, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti—both Italian immigrants—were quick to be accused. A heated trial ensued, but through it all, the two men maintained their innocence. The controversial case quickly rippled past borders as it became increasingly clear that Sacco and Vanzetti were fated for a death sentence. Protests sprang up around the world to fight for their lives. Learn the tragic history we dare not repeat in Doomed: Sacco, Vanzetti, and the End of the American Dream, an action-packed, fast-paced nonfiction book filled with issues that still resonate today. Praise for Doomed “A riveting true crime story—but who are the criminals? As relevant today as it was a century ago.” - Steve Sheinkin, author of Bomb and Fallout

On April 15, 1920, Parmenter, a paymaster, and Berardelli, his guard, were fired upon and killed. Sacco and Vanzetti were charged on May 5, 1920, with the crime of the murders, were indicted on September 14, 1920, and put to trial May 31, 1921, at Dedham, Norfolk County, Massachusetts. compare pages [3]-8.

An in-depth study of the lives of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, based on anarchist sources and new materials, provides answers to crucial questions about one of the most notorious cases in American legal history. Bibliog.

First published in 1981, this book reassesses the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant anarchists living in Boston in 1920. The pair were accused of a payroll robbery and the murder of two guards for which they were arrested and, after a long trial based on inadequate and prejudiced evidence, executed in 1927. In 1977, on the fiftieth anniversary of their deaths, the Commonwealth of Massachusettes issued a proclamation which acknowledged a miscarriage of justice. The Black Flag provides an account of the controversial trial and a re-evaluation of the celebrated case of the Commonwealth’s decision. Brian Jackson puts the trial in the social context of the period and exposes the nature of anarchism by looking at the lives of two of its exponents, resulting in a moving exploration of a series of events that continue to trouble the conscience of America.

Reexamines the 1921 murder case that resulted in the execution of the two anarchists, argues that they were innocent, and suggests a possible solution to the crime.

South Braintree, Massachusetts, 1920. Two men accost a paymaster and his bodyguard on the lot of a shoe factory. They speak to them, rob and shoot them, then disappear. A local official feels sure it was the work of anarchists. His search turns up two--Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. They also happen to be poor and Italian immigrants. That the evidence to prove them guilty was scanty, corrupt, or missing entirely is an appalling story in itself. The trial and appeals went on for seven years. The case became a cause, a landmark in American legal history. But the significance of the Sacco-Vanzetti case resonated far beyond the courtroom. With relentless logic, author Feuerlicht pursues the social forces surrounding their arrest and trial back to the first Puritan settlers of New England, whose determination to set a righteous example for the new nation bred suspicion and intolerance for every immigrant that followed them. On August 22, 1927, when Sacco and Vanzetti were electrocuted, immigrants of every race and nationality wept at the newsstands. "None of my enemies will be mourned as I am," Vanzetti said in his last letter to his family, and he was right. Feuerlicht's exhaustive research for this book uncovered new information about some of the lingering mysteries of the case and about the two men's personalities. In Italy she interviewed Vanzetti's sister and acquired more than 100 letters from Vanzetti to his family that have never been published in English. Her tight, dramatic narrative is punctuated with interviews with other surviving principals of the case, among them Nicola Sacco's grandson. "l believe," Feuerlicht writes in the foreword, "that the invidious ideas, emotions and attitudes that killed Sacco and Vanzetti were neither born with the case nor died with it but are with us still, and that for this reason Sacco and Vanzetti should never be forgotten."--From dust jacket.