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.
The Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti
31st May 1921