In Search of Sacco & Vanzetti

by Tejada, Susan

• ISBN13: 9781555537302
• ISBN10: 1555537308
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-04-10
• Publisher: Northeastern Univ Pr

Summary

It was a bold and brutal crime--robbery and murder in broad daylight on the streets of South Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1920. Tried for the crime and convicted, two Italian-born laborers, anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, went to the electric chair in 1927, professing their innocence. Journalist Susan Tejada has spent years investigating the case, sifting through diaries and police reports and interviewing descendants of major figures. She discovers little-known facts about Sacco, Vanzetti, and their supporters, and develops a tantalizing theory about how a doomed insider may have been coerced into helping professional criminals plan the heist. The author takes a panoramic view of the case, allowing the reader to see the personalities as individuals. She also paints a fascinating portrait of a bygone era: Providence gangsters and Boston Brahmins; nighttime raids and midnight bombings; and immigration, unionism, draft dodging, and violent anarchism in the turbulent early years of the twentieth century. In many ways this is as much a cultural history as a true-crime mystery or courtroom drama. Because the case played out against a background of domestic terrorism, in a time that echoes our own, we have a new appreciation of the potential connection between fear and the erosion of civil liberties and miscarriages of justice.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. ix
Note on the Text	p. xiii
Sudden Death	p. 3
"This Human Flotsam"	p. 9
Crime Wave	p. 22
"Organize! O Toilers"	p. 34
Constructing a Case	p. 58
"Conscription Was Upon Them"	p. 63
Dry Run at Plymouth	p. 75
"Terrorist Plot Is Seen"	p. 96
Dedham: Curtain Rising	p. 125
Docket Nos. 5545 and 5546	p. 132
Dedham: Curtain Falling	p. 162
Prison Crucible	p. 177
Battles In and Out of Court	p. 200
Clinging to Razor Blades	p. 220
Groundswell	p. 245
Brink	p. 255
Afterlives	p. 272
Two Mysteries	p. 288
Acknowledgments	p. 311
List of Abbreviations Used in the Notes	p. 313
Notes	p. 315
Selected Bibliography	p. 367
Index	p. 373
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