Tag: Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee

Hellraisers Journal: Debs Released from Atlanta Penitentiary, Weeps as 2,300 Convicts Cheer for His Freedom

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD if Crime to oppose bloodshed, AtR p1, Oct 23, 1920—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 27, 1921
Atlanta Penitentiary – Debs Weeps as 2,300 Convicts Cheer His Release

From The Indianapolis Star of December 26, 1921:

Ipl Str p1, Dec 26, 1921
——Ipl Str p1, Dec 26, 1921———

(Special to The Indianapolis Star.)

ATLANTA, Ga. Dec. 26.-Eugene V, Debs left prison today. His going was the occasion of the most unique demonstration in American prison history. 

Twenty-three hundred men, convicted of crimes unnumbered, their faces pressed against the bars of the windows on three floors of the big Federal penitentiary, shouted and cheered him and before them all, in the great foreground, he broke down and cried like a child. 

Recovering himself, he stepped into an automobile and was driven off, the voices of the 2,300 following him for half a mile. As this is written, on a train bound for Washington, with Debs as a passenger in a day coach, the mystery surrounding the celebrated convict deepens. Why is he going to the capital? He refuses to say, but he has admitted he has a mission there. Whether or not the trip is a condition of his release he declines to say, but the fact that he was driven to the station in the automobile of the warden, four of whose deputies are aboard this train, would indicate that while Debt is out of prison he is not yet free. 

“Citizen of the World.” 

So far as he himself is concerned, however, he construes himself a liberated “citizen of the world,” the phrase having to do with President Harding’s refusal to grant a pardon which would have restored the prisoner’s civil rights. 

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Hellraisers Journal: Attorneys for Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Plead for New Trial Under Heavy Guard

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote EGF, re Sacco at Dedham Jail, Oct 1920, Rebel Girl p304————————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 14, 1921
Dedham, Massachusetts – Attorneys Argue for New Trial for Sacco and Vanzetti 

From the Appeal to Reason of November 12, 1921:

Guard All Roads During New Trial
of Sacco-Vanzetti

BY EUGENE LYONS.

Vanzetti Sacco Rosina, Bst Eve Glb p1, May 31, 1921
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Nicola Sacco, Rosina Sacco

Boston, Nov. 4-The courthouse in Dedham, Mass., and all the roads leading to it are in a state of siege, with mounted state constabulary, riot squads, and the rest of the terror brigades patrolling the neighborhood, as counsel for Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the two workingmen whose conviction on a far-fetched charge of murder has roused the proletariat of all nations, argue for a new trial before Judge Webster Thayer.

The hysterical precautions against dangers which do not exist except in the imaginations of alarmist newspaper editors have transformed the court so that it looks like a military camp prepared for battle, rather than a hall of justice. The presiding judge, although he has denied the fake stories of threats against his life, is heavily guarded. Among those who were searched for hidden weapons as they entered the room were many prominent New Englanders, among them John Codman, chairman of local Civil Liberties Union, Mrs. Elizabeth Glendower Evans and Mrs. William James, the widow of the great psychologist and philosopher.

It is in such an atmosphere that the appeal for a new trial was made by attorneys Fred H. Moore and J. J. McAnarney, on the ground that the evidence introduced against their clients did not warrant the verdict. They berated the court for its refusal to grant separate trials for the two defendants, the evidence against them being of a different nature. Mr. McAnarney asserted that the jury was undoubtedly influenced by the halo of terror thrown around the prisoners. Mr. Moore analyzed in detail the testimony against the men, showing how flimsy and untenable it is…..

[Photograph added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Begins Under Heavy Guard in Dedham, Massachusetts

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote EGF, re Sacco at Dedham Jail, Oct 1920, Rebel Girl p304—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 1, 1921
Dedham, Massachusetts – Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti Begins

From the Boston Evening Globe of May 31, 1921:

SACCO-VANZETTI TRIAL HAS BEGUN
———-
Parmenter and Berardelli Killed
In Braintree Hold
———-

Sacco Vanzetti Trial Begins, Rosina, Bst Eve Glb p1, May 31, 1921

DEDHAM, May 31-At 2:25 this afternoon, after three talesmen had been examined, Wallace R. Hersey of Weymouth, a real estate dealer, was accepted as the first juryman to try Nicola Sacco and Bartholomeo [Bartolomeo] Vanzetti on a charge of murder of Frederick A. Parmenter, the paymaster of the later & Morrill Shoe Company, and Alessandro Beradelli, a guard, at South Braintree, on April 15, 1920. Parmenter was robbed of the factory payroll of $16,0OO.

Sacco was brought over from the Dedham Jail and Vanzetti was brought from the State Prison at Charlestown, in charge of Deputy Daniel A. Griffin. Warden Shattuck also accompanied the prisoner, who is serving a sentence of 12 to 15 years for attempted highway robbery at Bridgewater.

The State, was prepared to put on the stand employes of the factory who were witnesses of the robbery and shooting. The prosecution relies upon them and upon residents of towns through which the robbers fled in an automobile to establish the identity of the men or trial as those responsible for the murder.

Sacco is rather a young-looking man smooth-shaven. Vanzetti look older. He wears a mustache.

Various organizations throughout the country have contributed to a defense fund for Sacco and Vanzetti. The defense will offer an alibi for both men and will contend that they were arrested on this charge merely because of their known radical activities.

———-

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Hellraisers Journal: From the New York Liberator: Salsedo Dead-Sacco and Vanzetti in Danger -by Robert Minor

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote EGF, re Sacco at Dedham Jail, Oct 1920, Rebel Girl p304———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 2, 1921
Salsedo Dead in New York City; Sacco and Vanzetti in Danger in Massachusetts

From the New York Liberator of March 1921:

One Dead-Two in Danger

By Robert Minor

Cover by Robert Minor, Are They Doomed by Art Shields, Ad Lbtr Mar 1921
-by Art Shields
-cover design by Robert Minor

OUT of a window high in an office building in Park Row, a man’s body took the long drop to the street below. Early morning newspaper distributors and a policeman smoothed back the black hair on the head that rolled loosely. There were the fine forehead of olive skin, the black eyes and aquiline nose of an Italian.

The body had fallen from a window that gaped open in the half-dark of dawn, fourteen stories above. Investigation of the fourteenth floor showed that this was a window of a secret prison kept by the agents of the United States Department of Justice.

Do you remember “Palmer’s Revolution?” It was dated for May 1st, 1920. The Italian workman’s plunge to death on May 3rd from Palmer’s secret prison was its only casualty.

The secret jail, hidden away in an office building in the heart of the business district, was the headquarters for “Palmer’s Revolution.” In that resort, away from the restraints of regular prisons, Palmer’s agents handled “reds.” Andrea Salsedo was one of the working men that was being handled there. There was another man in the prison, Roberto Elia, a friend of the dead man. Elia had seen that Salsedo’s head and face were a mass of bruises. Salsedo had been taken out each day three times, he said, to be questioned and to be beaten so as to make him give the answers that were wanted. Elia said that he heard Salsedo’s screams while he was being tortured, and saw the agents examine Salsedo’s eyes and finger nails to learn whether the beating was going so far as to endanger life. When Elia went to sleep at night, the agents pointed to the open window, saying: “Don’t forget this is the fourteenth floor.”

In the morning Elia was told that Salsedo had “jumped out of the window.” The newspaper men and city policemen and strangers came, asking questions. The pile of shapeless flesh in the pool of blood below the window of the secret prison was embarrassing to Palmer and to Flynn of the Secret Service. Even the capitalist press stirred a little with the tang of the mystery. Did the man jump and kill himself, or was he thrown from the window? Was he thrown out alive? Or was a dead body dropped from the window to conceal the manner in which death had taken place?

The newspapers were shut off at last. The body was quickly buried without any coroner’s inquest. Roberto Elia was the only one who knew anything-except Palmer’s men. He was quickly deported to Italy, where he disappeared from sight. Then the Italian population of various American industrial districts began to make trouble. Agitators began to make protest meetings.

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Hellraisers Journal: The World Tomorrow: “Sacco and Vanzetti” by Mary Heaton Vorse – A Visit to Dedham Jail

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Quote EGF, re Sacco at Dedham Jail, Oct 1920, Rebel Girl p304———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 5, 1921
Dedham, Massachusetts – A Visit with Nicola Sacco, Gallant Fighter

From The World Tomorrow of January 1921:

Sacco and Vanzetti

By MARY HEATON VORSE

Ad Sacco n Vanzetti Defense, Liberator p2, Jan 1921WE drove through the sweet New England towns on our way to the jail in Dedham , where Nicola Sacco has been sitting for six months , deprived of all occupation, waiting his trial.

He is accused of having killed two men on April 15th and having made off in an automobile with $ 18,000 from the pay roll of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Plant in South Braintree. Labor is again on trial in Massachusetts.

Bartolomeo Vanzetti is also accused of this crime. But he is not in Dedham Jail because he has already begun serving a fifteen year sentence in Charlestown. On December 24th, 1919 , there was an attempted hold-up in Bridgewater of another shoe company. No arrests were made-not until May 5th, 1920. There were eighteen people who swore an alibi for Vanzetti. Eighteen people testified that on the afternoon and evening of December 24th Vanzetti was selling eels in Plymouth, for eels on Christmas Eve are to Italians what turkeys are to us on Thanksgiving. These witnesses knew Vanzetti very well, for he was a fish peddler in Oldtown, where they lived. But the testimony of these eighteen people did not count with the American jury. There were three people who identified Vanzetti as the man whom they had seen six months before driving in an automobile, from which shots were fired in Bridgewater. One of the women who identified Vanzetti was blind in one eye. But their identification convicted him.

As for Sacco, not one of the people brought in to identify him swear that this was the man they saw shooting, yet he is held without bail.

But Sacco and Vanzetti are offenders of another sort than criminal offenders. They have both taken an active part as labor leaders among the Italians. Not only were they gallant fighters, both of them, but they were inconveniently holding meetings about Salsedo– Salsedo, who went crazy—maybe—and on May 1st jumped from the fourteenth floor window of the Post Office Building in New York City, where he had been illegally detained by the Department of Justice agents for months—the only man who died in Mr. Palmer’s great May Day revolution. Among the Italians there is a ghastly suspicion that Salsedo did not jump-anyway, it was mighty inconvenient having young men holding meetings about him.

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