Sacco and Vanzetti
In the afternoon of April 15, 1920, a paymaster and guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts, carrying a factory payroll to an armored car, were shot and killed by two assailants. The killers grabbed the cash boxes and jumped into a nearby automobile, where two or three accomplices were waiting. The vehicle sped away, evading the police who gave chase. Local newspapers treated the event as just another brutal murder/robbery, so common in the post-World War I period. Three weeks later, on the evening of May 5, 1920, two Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were arrested. Both men had been carrying guns when they were arrested and, when questioned by the police, they lied about their whereabouts on April 15. The two were indicted for the South Braintree murders and robbery, and Vanzetti was also charged with an earlier attempted robbery in nearby Bridgewater on December 24, 1919. These events heralded the beginning of one of the most famous political trials in twentieth-century America. In the summer of 1920, Bartolomeo Vanzetti was tried for the 1919 Bridgewater robbery attempt. His strong alibi was corroborated by several witnesses, but the witnesses …show more content…
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had already ordered mass arrests and deportations of political and labor agitators. Although neither Sacco nor Vanzetti had a criminal record, both were known by the authorities as anarchist militants. Both had been extensively involved in labor strikes, political agitation (especially antiwar protests), and had had several confrontations with the law. The police knew that the two were strong supporters of Luigi Galleani’s Italian-language journal Cronica Sovversiva. The most militant anarchist journal in the United States, Cronica Sovversiva was feared by authorities because of its approval of revolutionary
In the afternoon of April 15, 1920, a paymaster and guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts, carrying a factory payroll to an armored car, were shot and killed by two assailants. The killers grabbed the cash boxes and jumped into a nearby automobile, where two or three accomplices were waiting. The vehicle sped away, evading the police who gave chase. Local newspapers treated the event as just another brutal murder/robbery, so common in the post-World War I period. Three weeks later, on the evening of May 5, 1920, two Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were arrested. Both men had been carrying guns when they were arrested and, when questioned by the police, they lied about their whereabouts on April 15. The two were indicted for the South Braintree murders and robbery, and Vanzetti was also charged with an earlier attempted robbery in nearby Bridgewater on December 24, 1919. These events heralded the beginning of one of the most famous political trials in twentieth-century America. In the summer of 1920, Bartolomeo Vanzetti was tried for the 1919 Bridgewater robbery attempt. His strong alibi was corroborated by several witnesses, but the witnesses …show more content…
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had already ordered mass arrests and deportations of political and labor agitators. Although neither Sacco nor Vanzetti had a criminal record, both were known by the authorities as anarchist militants. Both had been extensively involved in labor strikes, political agitation (especially antiwar protests), and had had several confrontations with the law. The police knew that the two were strong supporters of Luigi Galleani’s Italian-language journal Cronica Sovversiva. The most militant anarchist journal in the United States, Cronica Sovversiva was feared by authorities because of its approval of revolutionary