A brilliant program by the Sacco Vanzetti Commemoration Society took place last night (Wednesday) in remembrance of the wrongful execution of the two Italian immigrants on this date in 1927. The event at the Dante Alighieri Society hall in Cambridge included moving film footage of the funeral march as tens of thousands of mourners accompanied the caskets from Hanover Street in the North End of Boston to Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain.
Former Governor Michael Dukakis, who issued a proclamation in 1977 condemning their trial's injustice and removing all guilt from the names of Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, recounted memories of his own family's immigration experiences and of the contributions of other immigrant families to America's 20th century growth and prosperity.
He also recalled picking up work for a local business from a printing shop in Boston's North End run by Aldino Felicani.
Felicani
was the founder, and treasurer, of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, which
raised funds to fight for the defendants through the seven years between their
arrest and execution. Those kinds of connections run through local history. The
degrees of separation between Boston area families and the infamous,
international affair of the Sacco-Vanzetti case are fewer than we realize.
It's
because of Felicani's efforts that so many materials and physical artifacts
from the case, and the lives of the two victims of a state conspiracy and the
widespread prejudice that existed in the early decades of the 20th century
against Italian immigrants.
She
traveled to each man's birthplace, Sacco's in the town of Torremaggiore in the
south of Italy; Vanzetti's in Villafalletto in the northwest region of the
Piemonte. She pointed out that the case and its victims are well remembered in
Italy, while they are largely forgotten by the American public. In fact, family
memories of both men evoke strong emotions.
He also preserved
film footage of that famous funeral march. Generally regarded as the largest
public gathering in Boston in 20th century, the march's numbers were estimated
by the police at 20,000 and ten times that many by the city's newspapers. Felicani's
film is the only record of that day, because the federal government successfully
pressured Hollywood's newsreel companies
to destroy all their coverage related to Sacco and Vanzetti.
It was government
censorship. And of course we're not supposed to do that in America.
Why is it, Dukakis
asked at the commemoration (I'm paraphrasing here), that human beings can believe
such terrible things about people who are another color or have a different
religion, or are simply from a different country?
That
question of course has a terrible relevance today.
In the 19th
century, Dukakis pointed out, the prejudice against outsiders was directed against the Irish. The
Chinese were the banned by the exclusion act of 1882. Today, it's the Muslim
travel ban.
But in the
early 20th century the anti-immigrant bias was directed toward the flow of
immigrants from "Southern Europe," he said. "Italians, Greeks,
and Portuguese."
Building on the
Felicani collection and other sources, Professor Michele Fazio of the
University of North Carolina at Pembroke also spoke at the commemoration,
sharing slides and stories of her research into the lives of the principals and
the impact of their case on their Italian birthplace communities, in a talk
entitled "Mining the Archives: In the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti."
She
traveled to each man's birthplace, Sacco's in the town of Torremaggiore in the
south of Italy; Vanzetti's in Villafalletto in the northwest region of the
Piemonte. She pointed out that the case and its victims are well remembered in
Italy, while they are largely forgotten by the American public. In fact, family
memories of both men evoke strong emotions.
A traditional
memorial plaque in the cemetery at Villfaletto preserves the memory of a famous
native son whose death symbolized the continuing oppression of the poor and the
working class. In Torremaggiore,
a memorial executed in a modern looking vertical column remembers Sacco's life.
Locals in both communities extended a remarkable degree of hospitality on her
visit, Fazio said. "You have to eat first, and then you can talk.
She also
showed slides of newspaper coverage of the ongoing story in America, including frequent
depictions of Rosa Sacco, the defendant's wife and mother of his children, to illustrate the personal side and
family impact of the case. Later the newspapers ran photos of Vanzetti's sister, Luigia, who arrived
for a last meeting with her brother just days before his execution.
Professor Fazio is writing a
book on the family, class and gender issues highlighted by the Sacco-Vanzetti
case. She told me her book will include a discussion of "Suosso's Lane,"
my novel on the Plymouth, Mass. roots of the famous case in a chapter on the
literature of the Sacco and Vanzetti case.
Vanzetti
lived on Suosso's Lane, a quiet street in North Plymouth for four years before his arrest. My depiction of the
character of the idealistic Bartolomeo Vanzetti is based on the oral history
recollections of those who knew him well in those days, including the Brini
family of Suosso's Lane.
