On this day, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists who had immigrated to the United States in 1908, one a shoemaker and the other a fish peddler were brought to trial, accused of the murder of Frederick Parmenter and Alessandro Berardelli, the paymaster and guard of a local shoe factory. After a few hours’ deliberation on July 14, the jury convicted them of first-degree murder and they were sentenced to death. Anti-Italian, anti-immigrant, and anti-anarchist motivations were suspected as having heavily influenced the verdict, and a series of appeals followed with celebrated writers, artists, and academics pleading for their pardon or for a new trial. Notwithstanding the huge international outcry, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in the electric chair just after midnight on August 23, 1927.
