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SVCS
33 Harrison Av.
5th. Floor
Boston, MA 02111

Sacco and Vanzetti Bibliography

The primary sources for this bibliography have been the WorldCat database, Anne Folger Decker's extensive bibliography, and the Anarchist Archives Project collection. Other sources have included bibliographies from a number of books and searches on the internet. Source(s) for entries are available upon request.

As a general rule, I have included only the earliest edition of an item in the original language and country in which it was published, as well as the earliest translation in each country in which it was published. If an item was published in the same language in two different countries, e.g., the U.S. and England or Spain and Argentina, I have included both. Where it was not clear where an item first appeared, e.g., an article appearing in two monthly magazines in the same month, I have included both. Reprints have been included only if new material has been added.

To view the full document in pdf format click here.



Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a painting by Paul Normandia

Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and anarchists. They were accused of the murder of a shoe factory paymaster and guard and were convicted in 1921 in an atmosphere of antiradical an racist hysteria. In 1927 they were executed in Boston despite widespread belief in their innocence and a huge movement protesting the sentence.

"Never in our full lives could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of men as now we do by accident... That last moment belongs to us. That agony is our triumph." -- Bartolomeo Vanzetti

Original 60x48 inches painting by Paul Normandia for a May First 1999 event organized by Spontaneous Celebrations in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.


Lecture by Prof. Howard Zinn CANCELLED



We are sorry to announce that the lecture by Prof. Howard Zinn has been cancelled due to a personal family emergency by our guest lecturer. We hope to reschedule soon. Thank you.


Welcome to the Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society Webpage!

The year 2007 marked the 80th anniversary of the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. In 2006, a dedicated group of activists carried out a parade from the Stony Brook Park in Jamaica Plain to the Forest Hills Cemetery where the bodies of Sacco & Vanzetti were cremated after their execution. (To watch a 5-min clip prepared by RAI TV Italy click here.)

In 2007 we were able to formalize a Commemoration Society and carried out three days of events to remember Sacco & Vanzetti (August 23-25). We started with a march through the streets of Boston, a night of theater, music and poetry, and ended with an evening of films.

We will be out on the streets of Boston again on August 23, 2008 and besides marching and demonstrating we hope to establish the foundation for a monument to Sacco and Vanzetti in the North End of Boston.


Meeting of the Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society

The next meeting of the SVCS is scheduled for Tuesday, July 29th, 2008, 6:00 pm. at the Democracy Center, 45 Mt. Auburn,Cambridge, near Harvard Square.


Historical Marker to Sacco and Vanzetti Rededicated in the North End of Boston

12/02/2007 [NEWS] - Nearly 40 people braved the Boston cold on Saturday, December 1st. 2007, to unveil and rededicate a historical marker for Sacco and Vanzetti in the North End. The plaque was reinstalled at 256 Hanover Street, the place where the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee functioned from 1925 to 1927. An original plaque had been installed there in 1976, during the bicentennial of the U.S. independence, as part of the Freedom Trail. Early in the 80s, however, the plaque disappeared. The Sacco and Vanzetti Society formed this year to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti decided to correct this situation and now there is a new plaque in place with the original wording and marking as it was in 1976.

To view a Windows Media video (9mb) of the event click here.

Pictured is Jake Carman from the Boston Anti-Authoritarian Movement


Sacco and Vanzetti Remembered at the Rose Kennedy Greenway Park in Boston

On November 5, 2007 the Rose Kennedy Greenway Park, built on top of the "big dig", was officially opened to the public. The opening ceremony was attended by Governor Deval Patrick and Senator Edward Kennedy. According to the note in The Globe, "The North End park opened on Monday during a ceremony, which took part on the south side of Hanover Street between Cross Street and the Surface Artery.

The Greenway is named after Sen. Kennedy’s mother, who died in 1995 at the age of 104. Rose Kennedy grew up in the North End. One year after her death, the then-Gov. William Weld signed legislation naming the Greenway in her honor."

A timeline of historical events are contained in a series of plaques. One of them refers to the wrongful execution of anarchist labor organizers Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The plaque reads:

1927

On August 23, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed for a 1920 robbery and murder. The men claim to be victims of prejudice against radicals and immigrants. Many prominent intellectuals campaign unsuccessfuly for a retrial. One hundred thousand people visit the bodies at Langone Funeral Home on Hanover Street. In 1977, Governor Michael Dukakis exonerates them proclaiming that the case should be pondered "by all who cherish tolerance, justice and human understanding."

(Photo by Frederick G.S. Clow)



Video of the Sacco and Vanzetti 2007 Commemoration March in Boston

A low-definition video of the march in Boston to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti is available now on this website. This video is in windows media player format only. If you would like to have a copy of the video in DVD please email info[@]saccoandvanzetti.org (don't use the brackets in the address). Please be adviced that the size of the file is 53 megabytes.

To play or download the video click here.



Syracuse University Library Opens New Exhibit on the Execution of Sacco & Vanzetti:

08/30/2007 [NEWS] - Amidst a seeming wave of domestic terrorism, the 1920 murder of two payroll guards in Braintree, Massachusetts, exploded into what could arguably be described as the trial of the century. Earlier that year, a plot had been exposed in which thirty bombs, disguised as free samples from the Gimbels department store, had been sent to such pillars of American capitalism as J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, as well as to U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Palmer was responsible for the prosecution and deportation of thousands of radicals, including labor organizers, peace advocates, and other “undesirables.” Although the plot had not succeeded for lack of sufficient postage, in the resulting atmosphere of shock, fear, and repression, two working-class Italian Americans with anarchist connections, Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco, were not only accused of the crime, but also became scapegoats in the reaction to the supposed threat of the combined forces of labor unrest, new waves of immigration, and the advance of the “red menace” that followed the end of World War I.

This exhibition both commemorates the eightieth anniversary of the execution of the much-mythologized “good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler,” and celebrates the 1967 installation of the Ben Shahn mural at the heart of the Syracuse University campus. It is not our purpose to determine the guilt or innocence of the defendants in the Sacco-Vanzetti trial. Rather, we wish to highlight not only the creative response to the perceived injustice of the prosecution and sentence, but also the decades of continuing protest over what Katherine Anne Porter described as “the never-ending wrong.”

To see the exhibition on-line click here


A night of theater, music and poetry to commemorate 80th anniversary of Sacco & Vanzetti's execution

08/25/2007 [NEWS] - Continuing with the program designed by the Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society a group of talented artists presented their work in homage to Sacco and Vanzetti, executed by the State of Massachusetts 80 years ago. The event took place at the Community Church of Boston, at its main room where the bas-relief of Sacco and Vanzetti is proudly displayed. ...


People in Boston March for Sacco and Vanzetti!

08/24/2007 [NEWS] - A group of about 70 people marched through the streets of Boston yesterday to the chants of "Sacco and Vanzetti: We Will Not Forget!". Carrying banners that made the historical links between the repression and judicial murder of these two anarchist workers in 1927 and the repression today we could see the banners that carried the messages: "You can kill us, but you cannot kill the Idea!, "Stop the raids and deportations!", "Arab workers are not our enemy!", "No worker is illegal!", "Sacco and Vanzetti live!".




Sacco and Vanzetti: 80 years have passed and new targets of repression have been chosen

08/24/2007 [DOCUMENTS] - (Speech delivered by Jennifer Dowdell on behalf of Dorotea Manuela of the Boston May Day Coalition who couldn't attend the rally of 8/23/07 due to illness) ... A reporter for the Boston Transcript commented, “theres no story… just a couple of wops in a jam”! Some jurors, during the trial, openly expressed hostility toward the defendants.

In spite of worldwide protest at the unfairness of the trial, these men were put to death.

How strangely reminiscent are today’s events. Arabs are kidnapped from the streets of Berlin and confined in secret prisons or are shipped to Guantanamo where they rot without hearing or trial. We do not even need the sham trials of Sacco and Vanzetti.



5 minutes on Sacco & Vanzetti

08/24/2007 [DOCUMENTS] - (Text of the speech delivered by Pasqualino Colombaro on 8/23/07 at the memorial rally held at the Langone Park in the North End of Boston.)

The North End is where we can still hear the echoes of their steps and where for 7 years the mobilization in their defense was headquartered. A veritable global network of support and solidarity sprang out of here to block their execution and for their freedom. Hard to imagine it today surrounded as we are by a myriad mediocre Italian restaurants...



Mass. citizens Against the Death Penalty Marked 80th Anniversary of the Execution of Sacco & Vanzetti

The Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty (MCADP) marked the eightieth anniversary of the executions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, on August 23, 2007 with a program that begun at 11:00 a.m., in front of the Paul Revere statue (in the Prado) at the Paul Revere Mall, Hanover Street in the North End.

Speakers included Former Governor Michael S. Dukakis, Robert Meeropol (Ethel & Julius Rosenberg's son), Robert Renny Cushing, and David M. Ehrmann. ...



City of Boston passes resolution in commemoration of Sacco & Vanzetti

At the initiative of Boston City Councillor Felix Arroyo, and co-sponsored by Stephen Murphy and Chuck Turner, the Council passed a resolution declaring "that the Boston City Council does hereby extend its admiration and congratulations to the Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society, and in honor of its many contributions, does hereby declare August 23, 2007, Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Day in the City of Boston". The original, sealed document was presented to the Society during the rally at the Langone Park in the North End of Boston.


Italy’s American Baggage

08/23/2007 [DOCUMENTS] - Op-Ed by ANDREA CAMILLERI, Published by the New York Times, August 23, 2007.

THE century we left behind us just seven years ago was brilliantly described by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm as “the short century.” But perhaps a more exact definition would be “the compressed century,” for never has a period of 100 years seen so many world wars, so many scientific and technological advances, so many revolutions, so many epoch-making events piled almost one on top of the other. Indeed, the past century seems rather like a suitcase too small to hold everything that happened: it’s too crammed with used clothing, some of which hinders us from closing it and putting it away in the attic once and for all.

To read the full article click here.


Bruce Watson presents new book on Sacco & Vanzetti at the Boston Public Library

08/21/2007 [NEWS] - Coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, the writer Bruce Watson presented his book "Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind", published by the Penguin Group, from New York. Watson is an award-winning journalist whose articles have been published in the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Smithsonian, Reader's Digest, and Yankee magazine. The writer currently lives in Leverett, Massachusetts, although he prided during his talk to "have been born in California".


Reasons of State
A Memorial to Sacco and Vanzetti

Erich Mühsam wrote Reasons of State: A Memorial to Sacco and Vanzetti on the first anniversary of their execution. CR Edmonston has sent us his recent English translation of the play and we are happy to have the opportunity to make it available to you.

Erich Mühsam (6 April 1878 in Berlin, Germany – 10 July 1934 Oranienburg Concentration Camp) (also spelled Muehsam or Muhsam) was a German-Jewish anarchist, writer, poet, dramatist and cabaret performer.

Both a prolific poet, dramatist and a Bohemian intellectual, Mühsam emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic. However, Mühsam achieved international prominence during the years of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) for works which satirized Adolf Hitler and condemned Nazism before Hitler came to power in 1933. (Wikipedia).

To read the full play in pdf format please click here.




The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti

by Joseph E. Mulligan

August 23, 2007 will mark the 80th anniversary of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Their story has been told in books, articles, and songs, but perhaps never so engagingly as in the historical novel, THE PASSION OF SACCO AND VANZETTI – A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND, by Howard Fast (New York: Blue Heron Press, 1953).



Sacco and Vanzetti on YouTube

There is a selection of independent videos posted on YouTube in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti in different languages. The fact that people around the world still remembers the injustice of the so-called judicial murder of the two anarchists is evidence that they didn't die in vain.

To go to Sacco and Vanzetti on YouTube click here.



Poetry about Sacco and Vanzetti

The trial and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti moved many, including the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and novelist John Dos Passos, to express their sense of outrage at the injustice done to these men in verse. A number of these poems were collected by Lucia Trent and Ralph Cheyney and published in 1928 as America Arraigned! This slim volume included poems penned either during the seven years the two men spent behind bars or in the months after their "judicial murders." All the poems selected, with the exception of one, are taken from America Arraigned! We've limited our selections to those written either on the day the executions or soon after. And while Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem, "Justice Denied in Massachusetts", also appeared in the Trent and Cheyney collection, the version reproduced here is from The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems, where it first appeared in book form. To see our selection of poems click here.


Community Church of Boston Sacco-Vanzetti Memorial and Award Since 1976

The Community Church of Boston is proud to have one of three existing castings of the Sacco-Vanzetti memorial bas relief by noted sculptor Gutzon Borglum, creator of the Mount Rushmore presidential sculpture in South Dakota. The sculpture is on display in Lothrop Auditorium on the second floor of the Community Church Center at 565 Boylston Street in Copley Square, Boston. To read the story behind this sculpture written by Carol Adams and Rev. David Carl Olson click on the title of this article.


The Monument to Sacco and Vanzetti that Never Saw the Streets of Boston

Boston, July 15, 2007. In 1997 (exactly August 23) a 10-years younger Thomas Menino received as Mayor of Boston a relief of Sacco and Vanzetti sculpted by the famous author of the Mt. Rushmore National Memorial depicting the first 150 years of independent history of the U.S. with the likeness of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln. The artist's name was (John) Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum. The massive project in Mt. Rushmore sharply contrasts with the 7-foot size of the Sacco and Vanzetti relief that reads:

"What I wish more than all in this last hour of agony is that our case and our fate may be understood in their real being and serve as a tremendous lesson to the forces of freedom, that our suffering and death will not have been in vain."

What happened to that monument?


The strange case of the missing Sacco & Vanzetti plaque in the North End of Boston

Until sometime in the 1980s, a plaque to the right of the entrance to 256 Hanover Street in Boston's North End indicated the former site of the offices of the Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee. The plaque was one of a number of historical markers put up by the City of Boston in 1976 and was located along the Freedom Trail.

This was the text of the plaque:

Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee In may 1920, two Italian immigrants were arrested for the murder of two payroll guards in South Braintree. A group of friends and fellow anarchists organized a defense committee for the accused men, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. For the next seven years the committee struggled to free the two, whose cause became a passionate controversy the world over. In 1925, the committee moved to upstairs rooms at 256 Hanover Street, where the drama intensified. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in 1927, but theirs is "the case that will not die."


List of Endorsers for August 23, 24, 25, 2007 Events

The following organizations (in alphabetical order) endorsed the actitivies to commemorate Sacco & Vanzetti's 80th anniversary of their wrongful execution:

- AK Press
- Anarchist Archives Project
- Boston Anarchist Black Cross
- Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement - BAAM Boston
- Boston May Day Coalition
- Cape Cod Resistance
- City Life / Vida Urbana
- Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) - Boston Chapter
- Mass. Global Action
- Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights
- reVoltairine (Western Massachusetts)
- Satewide Harm Reduction Coalition (SHaRC)
- Socialist Alternative
- Stop the Wars Coalition
- The Anarchist Communist Union of Boston
- The Community Church of Boston
- The Lucy Parsons Collective
- Voice of Voiceless Student Club

If you would like to endorse and participate of the August 2008 activities, please send us an email to info [at] saccoandvanzetti.org. Thank you.



Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society Mission

MISSION

The Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society exists to preserve the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti's struggle to radically change society. We want to educate our neighbors about Massachusetts' radical history, and draw connections between the struggles of Sacco and Vanzetti and similar struggles today. We stand against the death penalty and political persecution as well as the persecution and scapegoating of immigrants.



Sacco and Vanzetti by Howard Zinn

Fifty years after the executions of Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti, Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts set up a panel to judge the fairness of the trial, and the conclusion was that the two men had not received a fair trial. This aroused a minor storm in Boston.

One letter, signed John M. Cabot, U.S. Ambassador Retired, declared his “great indignation” and pointed out that Governor Fuller’s affirmation of the death sentence was made after a special review by “three of Massachusetts’ most distinguished and respected citizens—President Lowell of Harvard, President Stratton of MIT and retired Judge Grant.”

The mexican newspaper La Jornada printed an Spanish translation of this article on August 23, 2007. On the same article they announced that Howard Zinn's book, "A Power Government Cannot Suppress" will be published in Spanish in Mexico by La Jornada in the near future.

Para ver la traduccion de este articulo publicado por La Jornada pinchar aqui.



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