Today in Labor History August 23, 1927: Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant anarchists living in the U.S., were executed murder during a botched robbery in Boston. However, there was no evidence linking them to the crime. They both had alibis, too, including an official at the Italian consulate. Their trial was rife with racism and political bias. The judge, Webster Thayer, said the following about Vanzetti: "This man, although he may not have actually committed the crime attributed to him, is nevertheless morally culpable, because he is the enemy of our existing institutions." The jury foreman, who was a former cop, said he didn’t care if they were innocent: "Damn them. They ought to hang anyway."
The author, John Dos Passos, who came to Boston to cover the trial as a journalist, was arrested at a solidarity protest along with writer Dorothy Parker. Einstein, H.G. Wells, and Bernard Shaw all appealed for Sacco and Vanzetti lives. The IWW called for a 3-day nationwide General Strike, which was heeded by 1,132 out of the 1,167 miners in Colorado’s Walsenburg coal district, leading to the Colorado coal strike of 1927. The day after their execution, there were violent demonstrations around the world, including in Tokyo, Geneva, London, and Paris. In South America, wildcat solidarity strikes completely shut down many factories. In Germany, 3 protesters were shot dead. In Boston, over 200,000 came to the funeral procession. Upton Sinclair’s novel, “Boston,” explores the trial, and Vanzetti's life. Woody Guthrie recorded a series of songs known as the Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti. In 1971, Joan Baez recorded her song "Here's to You," with music composed by Ennio Morricone, a tribute to Sacco & Vanzetti that went on to become a symbol for the human rights movement of the 1970s.
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