Nicola Sacco

Italian-born American political radical

• Born: April 22, 1891
• Birthplace: Torremaggiore, Italy
• Died: August 23, 1927
• Place of death: Boston, Massachusetts

Along with Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Sacco was charged with a payroll robbery and murder in 1920. Sacco and Vanzetti’s trial and execution, which led to worldwide protests, are considered examples of political and ethnic bias in the criminal justice system.

Early Life

Nicola Sacco (NIH-koh-lah SAH-koh) was born Ferdinando Sacco, the third son in a family of seventeen children, in Torremaggiore, Italy. Sacco’s family were relatively prosperous farmers and olive oil merchants. His father also owned a successful vineyard. Ferdinando (Nando) was a healthy and happy child, and although he was not interested in education, he attended school to the third grade and was literate in Italian when he emigrated to the United States. Young Sacco loved growing things and working with machines. The latter interest seemed perfect for a boy who dreamed of going to the United States and making his way in a free country.

In 1908, Sacco and his older brother Sabino sailed for the United States. An old friend of their father welcomed them to his home in Milford, Massachusetts, where they settled into a community of Italians from their home province of Foggia. After a year and a half, Sabino returned home to Italy, but Sacco stayed in Massachusetts. He worked his way from water boy at a construction site to a skilled job at the Milford Shoe Company. Sacco realized that to better himself, he needed to learn a trade, so he invested about fifty dollars of his savings and learned to become one of the best edge trimming machine operators in the business. He was considered a steady, hard-working employee and was well liked by his supervisors. He remained with the Milford Shoe Company until 1917.

Sacco attended English classes three evenings each week and enjoyed sports and socializing with friends in his free time. In 1911, Sacco met sixteen-year-old Rosina Zambelli at a dance. She was a small, pretty girl with copper-colored hair. She had a good mind and a good character. At this time, Sacco was described as sturdy, clean-cut, handsome, and modest. He was rather short (five feet five inches tall) with dark hair and brown eyes. The couple seemed proud of each other and very much in love. They were married in 1912, and their first son, Dante, was born in 1913.

Although Sacco made good wages as a skilled machine operator, he was concerned about the economic injustice he saw around him. He worried about poverty and unemployment and looked to various radical organizations for solutions. During the 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, during which Sacco supported the workers, he came into contact with a group of Italian anarchists. He joined an anarchist study group, the Circolo di Studi Sociali, and there he found fellowship and commitment to noble ideals of economic justice. Anarchism provided Sacco with an ethical framework and a focus for his life. He came to believe that capitalism was evil, that all governments were oppressive, that wars were crimes against humanity, and that liberty was the foundation of human happiness. Sacco collected money for anarchist causes and participated in demonstrations and strikes. He was not a thinker or a leader in the movement but rather a faithful foot soldier in the radical army.

With the outbreak of World War I, the anarchists faced the issue of whether registering for the draft would be a betrayal of their beliefs. Sacco was not eligible for the draft because he was an Italian citizen and also because he had a dependant wife and child. Nonetheless, the law required registration; to avoid the obligation, Sacco left the United States for Mexico. Among his companions was a new acquaintance, Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

Work was hard to find in Mexico, however, and Sacco and Vanzetti remained there only a few months. While in Mexico, Sacco used the alias Nicola Mosmacotelli. Although he resumed his surname in the United States, Sacco continued to call himself Nicola. Returning to Massachusetts, Sacco eventually found work with his old supervisor, now at the Three-K Shoe Company in Stoughton. Sacco remained at that job until May, 1920, four days before his arrest. Once again, he was considered a model employee, a hard worker, and a generous friend.

Life’s Work

During the period of U.S. involvement in World War I, the political atmosphere was characterized by hostility and suspicion toward immigrants and radicals. That attitude persisted after the war’s end, as fear of uprisings in the wake of the Russian Revolution led to the Red Scare in 1919-1920. Radical publications were banned, suspicious aliens were deported, and Congress voted to restrict immigration. In this environment of antiforeign feeling, Sacco and Vanzetti were charged, tried, convicted, and executed for robbery and murder in a 1920 incident in South Braintree, Massachusetts.

On April 15, 1920, Frederick Parmenter, the paymaster for a shoe manufacturing company, and his guard, Alessandro Berardelli, were robbed of $15,777 in cash and shot by two men with pistols. The robbers, whom witnesses described as “looking like Italians,” jumped into a getaway car with several other men and drove away. The incident followed a similar attempted robbery the previous Christmas Eve in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The police suspected Mike Boda, an Italian radical, whose car was traced to a garage where it was being repaired. They told the owner of the garage to notify them when someone came to claim the car.

On May 5, Sacco and Vanzetti, along with Boda and another associate, arrived to pick up the car. Given the political atmosphere and fearing they might be deported as dangerous aliens, they intended to use the vehicle to haul away and dispose of some anarchist and radical literature. Instead, they fell into a police trap. Both men were carrying guns when the police stopped them. Sacco had a .32 caliber Colt automatic along with twenty-three extra cartridges in his pocket. Vanzetti was carrying a .38 caliber revolver and a number of shotgun shells. Fearing reprisals for their radical views, the two lied to the police when originally questioned. They were not informed that they were under suspicion for robbery and murder but were instead asked about their citizenship, their political affiliations, their reading habits, and their advocacy of revolution. They lied about their politics and their movements to both Police Chief Michael Stewart and District Attorney Frederick Katzmann. Their flimsy stories reinforced the theory that the district attorney would use against them throughout their trials. He believed that a group of Italian bandits was responsible for both the Bridgewater and South Braintree holdups, that Boda’s car had been used in the crimes, that the stolen money had been smuggled back to Italy, that Vanzetti had been the Bridgewater thief, and that Vanzetti had been one of the shooters at South Braintree. The fact that the two had lied to police was repeatedly cited during the trial as proof of their “consciousness of guilt.”

During the following summer, Vanzetti was tried and convicted for the Bridgewater robbery. Although he had an alibi supported by many witnesses, the jury did not believe witnesses whose testimony in Italian had to be translated into English. As a first-time offender and for a crime with no injury, Vanzetti received the harsh sentence of ten to fifteen years. Based on Vanzetti’s experience, supporters of Sacco and Vanzetti concluded that it would be difficult for the two to have a fair trial in the hostile political atmosphere and so brought in Fred H. Moore, known for representing labor leaders and other militant clients, as lead defense attorney.

Moore determined to exploit the political prejudices of the prosecution by exposing the charges as an attempt to destroy the anarchist movement. He advised the defendants to admit their radical views and to insist that they were being tried for their politics, not for a crime. Outside the courtroom, he organized political meetings, contacted international organizations, raised funds from labor unions, and publicized the injustice of the case in millions of pamphlets. Meanwhile, the prosecution produced numerous witnesses, some of whom testified to the identity of Sacco and Vanzetti as the robbers and others whose identifications were thoroughly untrustworthy. They also brought ballistics experts to demonstrate similarities (although not positive matches) between the defendants’ weapons and those used in the crimes. A cap found at the crime scene was put into evidence because it resembled a cap Sacco often wore. Although Sacco’s own cap was found at his home, the jury was presented with the spurious cap as evidence. The prosecution repeatedly charged that the lies told by the defendants were evidence of their guilt.

Despite Sacco’s alibi that he was at the Italian consulate getting a passport on the day of the robbery and despite evidence of perjury by some of the prosecution witnesses, the two men were found guilty on July 14, 1920. Demonstrations were organized around the world to protest the verdict, and crowds stormed American embassies and consulates in Europe and Latin America.

Judge Webster Thayer presided over the trial. Known for his opposition to radicalism and immigration, Judge Thayer also ruled on every appeal. In other words, the same judge who had ruled on procedures and evidence during the original trial was allowed to review those decisions on appeal. In 1924, defense attorney Moore was replaced by William G. Thompson, a respected Boston lawyer. Thompson raised many points of law that prosecution witnesses had lied, that the police had engaged in illegal activities, that a convicted bank robber (Celestino Madeiros) had confessed to the crime, and that there was strong evidence implicating the notorious Morelli gang in the Braintree incident. Judge Thayer rejected every motion.

On April 9, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti were sentenced to death. Public outrage at the sentence and international protests led the governor of Massachusetts, Alvan T. Fuller, to appoint a special advisory committee, chaired by the president of Harvard University, to review the case. After a superficial examination, the committee concluded that the trial had been fair and recommended that the governor not grant clemency. Sacco and Vanzetti were electrocuted on August 23, 1927. Along with an international outcry against the execution, many Americans saw the event as proof that the nation had failed to live up to its ideals of justice and equality.

Significance

Fifty years after the execution, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis declared August 23, 1977, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Day. Dukakis did not comment on the guilt or innocence of the two but proclaimed instead that the atmosphere of their trial had been engulfed by “prejudice against foreigners and hostility toward unorthodox political views.”

The case of Sacco and Vanzetti has continued to provoke debate since the moment of their arrest. The arguments about whether ballistics evidence proves that Sacco or Vanzetti committed the crime continue. Sacco’s wife Rosina lived into her nineties but never clarified her husband’s guilt or innocence.

On the other hand, virtually everyone agrees that Sacco and Vanzetti did not receive a fair trial and that police, prosecutors, and the judge were guilty of infringing on the rights of the accused. Most agree that the two were convicted because of their politics rather than because of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Many see the case as an example of the unfairness of the U.S. justice system, which convicts the poor, the unpopular, and members of minority groups while the more privileged classes break the law with impunity.

Bibliography

Avrich, Paul. Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. Avrich locates Sacco and Vanzetti within the context of a comprehensive examination of anarchist politics.

Feuerlicht, Roberta S. Justice Crucified: The Story of Sacco and Vanzetti. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977. Feuerlicht interprets the Sacco and Vanzetti case as a symbolic conflict between the establishment and outsiders.

Frankfurter, Felix. The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti. Boston: Little, Brown, 1927. This book provides a meticulous examination of the legal issues involved in the case.

Jouglin, G. Louis, and Edmund M. Morgan. The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1948. Jouglin and Morgan place the judicial process within the social and cultural conflicts of the 1920’s.

Newby, Richard, ed. Kill Now, Talk Forever: Debating Sacco and Vanzetti. Bloomington, Ind.: First Books, 2003. Contains a transcript of Sacco and Vanzetti’s trial proceedings and essays in which writers debate the fairness of the verdict and other aspects of the case.

Russell, Francis. Sacco and Vanzetti: The Case Resolved. New York: Harper & Row, 1986. Russell claims to have proof of Sacco’s guilt based on a letter.

Topp, Michael M. The Sacco and Vanzetti Case: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005. Topp provides an overview of the case placing it within the context of the 1920’s immigrant and radical cultures and examining the trial’s contemporary. Also includes letters from the two defendants and other primary source documents relating to the case.