The document discusses the Sacco and Vanzetti case from the 1920s in which two Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were anarchists, were tried and executed for murder despite a lack of evidence. It provides historical context on anti-immigrant and anti-radical sentiment in America at the time as well as laws passed to restrict immigration by anarchists. It also examines the international outrage over the case and questions of whether Sacco and Vanzetti received a fair trial given bias against their ethnicity and political beliefs.

1. The American Way: Immigration and
Radicalism: Sacco and Vanzetti
Ben Shahn
1932

2. Bartolomeo Vanzetti (left), handcuffed to Nicola Sacco
(right). Dedham, Massachusetts Superior Court, 1923.

3. Engraving by Walter Crane of the executed
"Anarchists of Chicago" after the Haymarket
Affair, May 4, 1886.
The Haymarket affair considered the most
significant event for the origin of international
May Day observances
Anarchists executed because they were
anarchists
Defining moment for Emma Goldman and
others
Unjust system can not deliver justice

4. From the Other Shores
1890

5. 1899

7. Process of Exclusion
• The Immigration Act of 1903 (Anarchist
Exclusion Act) codified previous immigration
law and added four inadmissible
classes: anarchists, people
with epilepsy, beggars, and importers
of prostitutes.
• Little impact. Provisions related to anarchists
expanded in Immigration Act of 1918.

8. Immigration Act of 1918
Expanded and elaborated brief definition found
in the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 to read:

9. Immigration Act of 1918
(a) aliens who are anarchists;
(b) aliens who advise, advocate, or teach, or who are members
of, or affiliated with, any organization, society, or group, that
advises, advocates, or teaches opposition to all organized
government;
(c) aliens who believe in, advise, advocate, or teach, or who are
members of, or affiliated with, any organization, association,
society, or group, that believes in, advises, advocates, or teaches:
(1) the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the
United States or of all forms of law, or (2) the duty, necessity, or
propriety of the unlawful assaulting or killing of any officer or
officers, either of specific individuals or of officers generally, of
the Government of the United States or of any other organized
government, because of his or their official character, or (3) the
unlawful damage, injury, or destruction of property, or

10. Immigration Act of 1918
(d) aliens who write, publish, or cause to be written or
published, or who knowingly circulate, distribute, print, or
display, or knowingly cause to be circulated, distributed, printed,
or displayed, or knowingly have in their possession for the
purpose of circulation, distribution, publication, or display any
written or printed matter, advising, advocating, or teaching
opposition to all government, or advising, advocating, or
teaching:
(1) the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the
United States or of all forms of law, or
(2) the duty, necessity, or propriety of the unlawful assaulting or
killing of any officer or officers of the Government of the United
States or of any other government, or
(3) the unlawful damage, injury, or destruction of property, or (4)
sabotage;

11. Immigration Act of 1918
(e) aliens who are members of, or affiliated with,
any organization, association, society, or group,
that writes, circulates, distributes, prints,
publishes, or displays, or causes to be written,
circulated, distributed, printed, published, or
displayed, or that has in its possession for the
purpose of circulation, distribution, publication,
or display, any written or printed matter of the
character in subdivision (d).

12. From Exclusion to Deportation
• Teaching the equivalent to sabotage
• Arrest anarchists because anarchists
• Escalation with Congress-funded Palmer Raids
(Nov 1919-Jan 1920); bombings and
deportations
• Anarchists silenced (Buford deportations)
• Either citizen or criminal?

14. Sacco and Vanzetti: From
Anarchists to Symbols

15. The Context: The Twenties
The Roaring 20s: Gangsters, fear of crime and
armed robbery (Bonnie and Clyde)
The Tribal Twenties: Nativism and the KKK
Immigrants suspicious by being un-American.
American Way of Life? Anti-Catholic;
Anti-Radical; and Pro Anglo-Saxon
Palmer Raids and Red Scare (Russian Revolution
and Bolsheviks!) Fear and anxiety!
Isolationism as “answer”

16. Enemies of the American Way of Life
• Anarchist = criminal
• 2 Italian immigrants arrive in USA (in 1908)
• Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker
• Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler
• Accused of committing payroll robbery of
Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in South
Braintree, Mass. on April 15, 1920. 2 men
killed.

17. Suspicion not Proof of Crime
• Sacco and Vanzetti looked suspicious because
Italian
• Behaved suspicious because anarchists
• “consciousness of guilt”
• Seven years in prison, six years of 8 appeals
and execution on Aug. 23, 1927

18. 1927 photo, Bartolomeo Vanzetti,
second from left foreground, and Nicola
Sacco, second from right foreground,
stand in handcuffs with unidentified
escorts in Massachusetts. –AP, File

19. Vanzetti (May 1927) in
the New York World
“If it had not been for these thing[s], I might have
live[d] out my life, talking at street corners to scorning
men. I might have die[d], unmarked, unknown, a
failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and
our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do
such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s
understanding of man as we now do by dying. 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.”

20. Vanzetti's Letter to Sacco's Son
August 21, 1927. From the Death House of
Massachusetts State Prison
MY DEAR DANTE:
I still hope, and we will fight until the last moment, to
revindicate our right to live and to be free, but all the
forces of the State and of the money and reaction are
deadly against us because we are libertarians or
anarchists.
I write little of this because you are now and yet too
young to understand these things and other things of
which I would like to reason with you.

21. Vanzetti's Letter to Sacco's Son
But, if you do well, you will grow and understand your
father's and my case and your father's and my
principles, for which we will soon be put to death.
I tell you now that all that I know of your father, he is
not a criminal, but one of the bravest men I ever knew.
Some day you will understand what I am about to tell
you. That your father has sacrificed everything dear
and sacred to the human heart and soul for his fate in
liberty and justice for all. That day you will be proud of
your father, and if you come brave enough, you will
take his place in the struggle between tyranny and
liberty and you will vindicate his [our] names and our
blood.

22. Vanzetti's Letter to Sacco's Son
If we have to die now, you shall know, when you will be
able to understand this tragedy in its fullest, how good
and brave your father has been with you, your father
and I, during these eight years of struggle, sorrow,
passion, anguish and agony. . . .
Remember, Dante, remember always these things; we
are not criminals; they convicted us on a frame-up;
they denied us a new trial; and if we will be executed
after seven years, four months and seventeen days of
unspeakable tortures and wrong, it is for what I have
already told you; because we were for the poor and
against the exploitation and oppression of the man by
the man.

23. Vanzetti's Letter to Sacco's Son
The documents of our case, which you and other ones will
collect and preserve, will prove to you that your father, your
mother, Ines, my family and I have sacrificed by and to a State
Reason of the American Plutocratic reaction.
The day will come when you will understand the atrocious cause
of the above written words, in all its fullness. Then you will
honor us.
Now Dante, be brave and good always. I embrace you.
P.S. I left the copy of An American Bible to your mother now, for
she will like to read it, and she will give it to you when you will be
bigger and able to understand it. Keep it for remembrance. It
will also testify to you how good and generous Mrs. Gertrude
Winslow has been with us all. Good-bye Dante.
BARTOLOMEO

24. Why all the fuss?
What made the Sacco and Vanzetti case an
international event?

25. Why all the fuss?
• Question of justice
• Lack of evidence
• Post World War I context: the Modern State
• Civil Liberties v. National Security
• Political beliefs on trial (like Haymarket)
• Eloquence of Vanzetti

26. “Erasing Anarchism”
• Dan Colson, “Erasing Anarchism: Sacco and
Vanzetti and the Logic of Representation”
(2014)
• “effacing” of anarchism by making Sacco and
Vanzetti Trial not about anarchism but about
something else: Murder; watered down
radicalism; symbol of injustice
• Anarchism of Sacco and Vanzetti erased; even
in much of Vanzetti’s writings

27. Democracy, Justice and Citizenship
• Criminal law “disposes of transgression”
(Colson 949); law as a corrective to restore
social order
• Citizen or criminal based on relationship to
social order
• Trial to arrive at “justice” and restore order
• “civic duty” to serve as citizen and juror
• “House”(state) always win. Can’t lose, judge
and jury on its side

28. What does it say about the USA?
USA born of revolution and by immigrants and
yet legal system and the state threatened by
both?
Democratic Gov. Michael Dukakis, a son of
Greek immigrants, proclaimed Aug. 23,1977
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Memorial
Day.

29. Images and Realities
• Juxtapose images of anarchism by anarchists
and images by public opinion
• Nature of violence
• Violence and the State, Violence and
Anarchism
• Overreaction to limited threat
• Response: State Actions (restrictions,
legislation, violence)

30. Protest to save Sacco and Vanzetti in London, England in 1921.

32. Following the funeral carriages, 1927

33. Statue of “Liberty”?

38. Open battle between striking teamsters armed with
pipes and the police in the streets of Minneapolis,
June 1934.