Sacco+and+Vanzetti

**__Sacco and Vanzetti__**



Sacco and Vanzetti were left wing radicals and that meant that they opposed the war. They also took part in protest meetings and in 1917, when the United States entered the war, they fled together to Mexico in order to avoid being enlisted into the United States Army. When the war was over they returned to their homes. On 5th May, 1920, Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and interviewed about the murders of Frederick Parmenter and Alessandro Berardelli, in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The men had been killed while carrying two boxes containing the payroll of a shoe factory. After Parmenter and Berardelli were shot dead, the two robbers took the $15,000 and got into a car containing several other men, and driven away. Man eyewitnesses said that the robbers looked Italian. There were a lot of Italian immigrants that were questioned but eventually the authorities decided to charge Sacco and Vanzetti with the murders. Although the two men did not have a past history of committing crimes, it was argued that they had committed the robbery to acquire funds for their anarchist political campaign. The trial started on 21st May, 1921. The main evidence against the men was that they were both carrying a gun when arrested. Some people who saw the crime taking place identified Vanzetti and Sacco as the robbers. Others disagreed and both men had good alibis. Vanzetti was selling fish in Plymouth while Sacco was in Boston with his wife having his photograph taken. The prosecution made a great deal of the fact that all those called to provide evidence to support these alibis were Italian immigrants.

Sacco and Vanzetti were not very fluent with the English language, so this made it very hard for them to answer the questions that were given in court. They were accused with unpatriotic behavior by going off to Mexico during WWI. The trial lasted for a month and a half, and on 14th July, 1921, both men were found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to death. After their sentence they received a lot of publicity. Observers believed that their conviction resulted from prejudice against them as Italian immigrants and because they held radical political beliefs. The case resulted in anti-US demonstrations in several European countries and at one of these in Paris, a bomb exploded killing twenty people. A couple years later an immigrant from Portuguese confessed to the murder and also gave away four names that were involved with the murder. The Morelli brothers were known criminals around town for committing similar robberies. Authorities didn’t want to take part in a trial but many people around the area wanted to have a retrial because they knew it was the right thing to do. The authorities refused to over through the decision to go through with the plan to execute Sacco and Vanzetti. By the summer of 1927 it was definite that Sacco and Vanzetti were going to b executed. On 23rd August 1927, the day of execution, over 250,000 people took part in a silent demonstration in Boston. Fifty years later, on 23rd August, 1977, Michael Dukakis, the Governor of Massachusetts, issued a proclamation, effectively absolving the two men of the crime.

[|Sacco and Vanzetti Song]