Book Description

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and they were anarchists. Were these their only crimes? Or did they really murder a factory paymaster and his guard in Braintree, Massachusetts, in April 1920? Seven years later, they were both put to death in the electric chair, and the thousands of mourners who followed their funeral cortege thought that they were victims of prejudice. Were they merely killers? In Sacco and Vanzetti, the latest addition to "New England Remembers" series, Eli C. Bortman decodes one of the most fascinating murder cases in New England history. And he considers the significance of a case that continues to cause controversy. Vanzetti believed that he and Sacco were not dying in vain-that their execution would trigger an international revolt of anarchists. This did not happen, but the shock waves continue to reverberate.