Ninety years ago this August,
more than 700 law enforcement officers, from squads throughout the city and
state, stood guard in the historic Charlestown neighborhood of Boston.
It was August 22, 1927, and Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco
and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were scheduled to die in the electric chair at
Charlestown State Prison at midnight. A large crowd of sympathizers held a
death vigil outside the police cordon. They might, some feared, resort to
violence. (They didn’t.)
In 1921 Sacco and Vanzetti had been convicted of robbery and
murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts, a crime committed a year earlier. Their
ordeal of imprisonment and futile legal motions for a new trial had played out against
a background of rising immigration restriction and domestic terrorism. As the
years passed, and arguments for the men’s innocence became stronger, the case
morphed from a local police-blotter affair into an international cause célèbre.
This post, adapted from In
Search of Sacco and Vanzetti, describes the men’s final hours.
≈ ≈
Monday, August 22, 1927
Defense attorneys reflexively went through legal motions. Barring
a miracle, the last grain of sand in the Sacco-Vanzetti hourglass would fall at
midnight.
Around the world people took to the streets. There was a
bombing in Argentina and “feverish interest” in Germany. Twelve thousand
demonstrators gathered in Hyde Park in London. There was a call for general strikes
in Australia and in Paraguay. Protestors marched in Mexico and Switzerland. In
Paris, police were reported to be mobilizing against “Sacco outbreaks,” as if
support for the prisoners was spreading like the plague.
In the United States police were on red alert. Officers in
Chicago received instructions “to rush every Sacco-Vanzetti assemblage and to
be liberal in the use of tear bombs.” Special guards were assigned to protect
monuments and government buildings in Washington, and bridges and subways in New
York.
In Boston, at the center of the action, demonstrators
maintained their State House protest. A bystander told Mary Donovan, secretary
of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, that he would “be damn glad when they
fry those wops tonight and get this thing over.”
≈ ≈
Vanzetti’s sister, Luigia, and Sacco’s wife, Rosina, tried
to keep busy.
They called on William Cardinal O’Connell, archbishop of
Boston. Luigia appealed to the cardinal for his help, but was said to
understand that the prelate’s role was “strictly spiritual.”
Rosina and Luigia also went to the State House to plead with
Massachusetts Governor Alvan Fuller. According to attorney Michael Musmanno,
who interpreted for them at this interview and who later reconstructed the
scene, Mrs. Sacco appealed to Fuller as a family man: “My husband was always
good and faithful to me. He was devoted to his home. Is that the way bandits
act? . . . Governor, help my children! Do not kill their father! Please,
please, have mercy and have justice. . . . Won’t you see how innocent Nick is?”
For her part, Luigia Vanzetti appealed to the governor as a
religious man: “[My brother’s] innocence is assured. Of that there can be no
doubt. God has recorded that on the books; the only problem in this long case
has been to have those in authority read God’s handwriting. . . . On my knees,
oh, Governor! I implore you, do not let America become known as the land of
cruelty instead of mercy. I beg of you, I pray you for mercy!”
The governor said he was impressed by the two women, but had
no doubts about the prisoners’ guilt.
≈ ≈
Although Governor Fuller was not about to change his mind,
he stayed in his office until midnight on August 22, making himself available
to just about anybody who wanted to see him.
The visitors streamed in.
Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay met with him, then sent a
follow-up letter begging the governor to ask himself: What would Jesus do?
Jesus would not, she believed, have walked “the way in which your feet are set!
. . . There is need in Massachusetts of a great man tonight. It is not yet too
late for you to be that man.”
Congressman Fiorello La Guardia of New York met with Fuller.
Ten years earlier the two men had served together in the United States House of
Representatives. Now, La Guardia told reporters, “There is about one chance in
a thousand” for a successful appeal.
Paul Kellogg, editor of the social policy journal Survey, met with the governor. Together
with five other prominent citizens, he asked for a stay of execution until
doubts could be resolved. Fuller accused the group of being manipulated by
Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School and author of a
blistering and influential analysis of the case.
Nearly a thousand letters and telegrams, most urging
clemency, also swamped Fuller’s office that day.
≈ ≈
Inside Charlestown State Prison
Mid-morning
Rosina and Luigia arrived for the first of three visits they
would make to the prison that day. The women entered the death house “with
faltering steps,” the Boston Globe reported, and left an hour later
showing “evidences of great sorrow.”
Mid-afternoon
Robert Elliott arrived. The professional electrician worked
as a free-lance executioner for several states, including Massachusetts. He did
an equipment check on Charlestown’s heavy wooden electric chair with its
straps, high back, broad arms, rubber-padded headrest, and legs bolted to the
floor:
“I make certain [for each execution
that the chair] is hooked up and that no wires are broken. I inspect the
adjusting screws, test the strength of the straps, and determine whether the
buckles work freely. A strap did break during an execution, and I try to
prevent a repetition of this.
“Then I look to see if the mask is
where it should be, and ascertain whether its strap and buckle are sound. The
mask, usually a black leather band with an opening for the nostrils and mouth,
serves a double purpose: that of shielding the face and holding the head in
place. . . .
“A pail of brine—nothing more than a
solution of common salt and water—is prepared. In this are soaked the sponges
of the electrodes to insure a good contact. . . .
“My next step is to test the
apparatus. This is accomplished in either of two ways. One is to attach a board
of electric lights to the wires leading to the chair. . . . The other is to put
the two electrodes in a bucket of water, with perhaps a pinch of salt, and
close the circuit. . . .”
Inside the prison, the atmosphere was tense, Elliott
observed. Nerves were almost at the breaking point.
Late afternoon
Rosina and Luigia visited again, then attorney William
Thompson arrived. Thompson had represented Sacco and Vanzetti in the final
years of the case. He had received a message that Vanzetti wanted to see him
before he died. Lawyer and client spoke of battles they had fought, and of the
future. Vanzetti gave Thompson “his most solemn reassurance, . . . with a
sincerity which I could not doubt, . . . that both he and Sacco were absolutely
innocent of the South Braintree crime. . . .” Vanzetti said he understood more
clearly than ever that he would not have been convicted “had he not been an
anarchist, so that he was in a very real sense dying for his cause. He said it
was a cause for which he was prepared to die. He said it was the cause of the
upward progress of humanity. . . . He asked me to do what I could to clear his
name. . . .”
They talked about Christianity. The condemned man “asked me
whether I thought it possible that he could forgive” his persecutors. Thompson
replied that he did not know, but suggested that Vanzetti try, “for his own
peace of mind, and also because an example of such forgiveness would in the end
be more powerful . . . than anything else. . . .” Vanzetti said he would think
about it.
Before leaving the death house, Thompson said farewell to
Sacco, in the adjacent cell. The two men had often disagreed about strategy.
Now Sacco told Thompson that “he hoped that our differences . . . had not
affected our personal relations, thanked me for what I had done for him, showed
no sign of fear, shook hands with me firmly [through the bars], and bade me
goodbye. His manner also was one of absolute sincerity.”
Five o’clock
Suppertime at Charlestown. A light supper was brought to the
prisoners in the death house. No one was hungry.
Six o’clock
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the autodidact who had kept up such an
extensive correspondence with so many people during seven years behind bars,
sat down to write his last known letter. It was a message for lecturer and
liberal activist Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, namesake of his famous
literary grandfather. Vanzetti thanked him for “all that you have done for
Nicola, I, and for our families.” He asked Dana for a final favor: “What I wish
more than all in this last hour of agony is that our case and our fate may be
understood . . . and serve as a tremendous lesson . . . so that our suffering
and death will not have been in vain.”
Aldino Felicani arrived at the prison while Vanzetti was
writing this letter. By law, someone was required to claim the bodies of
electrocuted prisoners before they died. “It was up to me to do that,” said
Felicani, the friend who had started the men’s defense committee and had supported
them untiringly.
Journalist Gardner Jackson accompanied Felicani to the jail.
“The whole city was an armed camp,” Felicani recalled. “My heart was beating
fast. The trip . . . was made in silence. . . . We reached the jail. The
atmosphere that prevailed was suspense and fear. . . . Inmates appeared to be
watching in the shadows. . . . Everyone, at the entrance, in the lobby, in the
office, was busy with the details of the execution. I entered the office. The
warden, Mr. Hendry, was there. He was drunk. I asked him what the procedure was
and he gave me the papers to sign. It was in such a manner that I claimed the
bodies of my friends, who were then still alive.”
Seven o’clock
Rosina and Luigia returned for a few final moments of
farewell. “Leave-Taking Pathetic,” one headline summed up; “Doomed Men Stretch
Arms Through Cell Bars in Efforts to Embrace Wife and Sister.”
Starting at seven “and continuing throughout the evening,”
radio station WBET aired live coverage of execution night.
Eight forty-five
Warden Hendry went to the death house. The latest petition
for a writ of habeas corpus had been denied. Any faint glimmer of hope for an
eleventh-hour reprieve was gone. Hendry stopped at each cell. “I am sorry,” he
told each prisoner, “but it is my painful duty to inform you that you have to
die tonight. Your lawyers have exhausted their efforts.”
Celestino Madeiros, a convicted murderer scheduled to be
executed that night along with Sacco and Vanzetti, was asleep when Hendry went
to his cell. Madeiros woke up, listened, and went back to sleep. (Two years
earlier, Madeiros had confessed to being in on the South Braintree crime and had
exonerated Sacco and Vanzetti, but the motion for a new trial based on the
confession had been rejected.) Sacco was writing a letter to his father in
Italy when Hendry went to his cell next. He told the warden he wanted to be
sure that his father received the letter, and Hendry promised he would
personally see that it was mailed. Sacco thanked the warden “for this and other
kindnesses” during his imprisonment. Vanzetti, in the last cell, was pacing
back and forth. He had been at Charlestown, and known Hendry, the longest. He
appeared momentarily shocked when Hendry gave him the news. Then Vanzetti too
thanked the warden for his kindnesses, and resumed pacing.
Prison chaplain Father Michael Murphy accompanied Hendry.
All three condemned men rejected his entreaties to return to their religious faith
before dying.
Nine forty-five
Father Murphy went back to the death house cells with
Hendry, but his ministrations were again rejected. The prisoners, he told a
reporter, said they preferred to die as they had lived.
Ten o’clock
In the presence of Robert Elliott, prison electricians
tested the chair one last time.
Midnight
The official witnesses headed to the white-walled, brightly
lit death chamber: five government doctors, three corrections officials, and a
“newsgatherer” selected by lot, William Playfair of the Associated Press.
Scores of other reporters waited across the prison yard in a guards’ building.
“When more than one
person is ticketed for death on the same night, the order of their going is
determined in advance. The weakest—that is, the one least able to stand up
under the ordeal of waiting his turn—is first. The others follow according to
their physical and mental condition.” Thus Robert Elliott described the
procedure for deciding the order of multiple executions, a procedure that in
Charlestown dictated the prisoners’ cell assignments: Celestino Madeiros in
Cell One, Nicola Sacco in Cell Two, Bartolomeo Vanzetti in Cell Three.
“The death march began three minutes after twelve,” Elliott
recalled. “With a guard on each side, Madeiros entered the death chamber in a
semi-stupor. . . . He spoke not a word.” He was strapped down. Elliott “threw
on a current of 1400 to 1900 volts. Three times the current was thrown on and
off, and at 12:09:35 [a.m.], four examining physicians declared officially that
Celestino Madeiros was dead.”
Behind a screen stood “three green slabs awaiting three
corpses.” The body of Madeiros was removed from the chair and placed on one of
the waiting slabs. He was 25 years old when he died.
One telegraph operator was sitting near the death chamber;
another, in the guards’ building where the press was hunkered down. “Within a
minute of the time that Madeiros had died, the ticker . . . flashed out the
news. Instantly other tickers . . . went into action, and within a matter of
minutes the news went racing across the world.”
Nicola was next. To Bartolo, he called out “Goodbye.” Then
he walked “slowly but steadily” into the death chamber. Elliott noticed that
Sacco was “deathly pale.”
Nick “sat down without protest.” Many years had passed since
the day he had sat down in another chair, posing for a portrait in a
photographer’s studio, exuding youthful ambition and confidence. Many years,
too, since he had mastered his shoemaking craft, since he had fallen in love,
since he had carried his son in his arms. “As the guards swung about to adjust
the straps [and apply the electrodes], Sacco sat bolt upright in the chair of
death. Casting about wildly with his eyes, he cried [out] in Italian, ‘Long live
anarchy!’”
“Everything was now ready,” Elliott said, “except the
placing of the mask over his face. But the mask could not be found. The guards
and I searched frantically for it. I could feel beads of perspiration starting
out on my forehead. Meanwhile, Sacco continued to speak. ‘Farewell, my wife and
child and all my friends,’ he cried in broken English.”
“Then, seeming to become cognizant of the witnesses as
individuals . . . , he went on politely, ‘Good evening, gentlemen.’”
“As Sacco was saying these things,” Elliott recalled, “a
guard strode back into the room with the mask. It had been caught in Madeiros’s
clothing, and carried from the chamber when his body was taken out for autopsy.
Had it not been for Sacco’s talking, the incident might have been noticed. As
it was, the only reporter present failed to observe what had happened, and no
mention was made of it in the newspapers. I have often since been thankful that
the little Italian was so talkative as he sat in the chair awaiting the end.”
Guards slipped the recovered mask over Nick’s face. He
called out to his dead mother, “Farewell, mia madre.” An “extra heavy current”
was administered, 1800 to 2000 volts. At 12:19:02 a.m., Nicola Sacco was
pronounced dead, and his body removed from the chair. He was 36 years old when
he died.
The guards went to the cells for the last time. They
unlocked the third cell, and “escorted Vanzetti over the twenty short steps to
the door of the death chamber.” Elliott noted that the last prisoner was the
“most composed. . . . When guards came for him, he shook their hands. . . .” He
thanked Warden Hendry “for everything you have done for me.”
Vanzetti took his place in the heavy chair. The survival
skills he had developed as a lonely teenager far from home had served him well
throughout his life, and now, staring death in the face, he stayed calm. As the
guards adjusted straps and electrodes, Vanzetti spoke to the witnesses: “I wish
to tell you I am innocent, and never committed any crime, but sometimes some
sin. I thank you for everything you have done for me. I am innocent of all
crime, not only of this, but all. I am an innocent man.”
Bartolo must have spent his final hours on earth thinking
about his conversation with William Thompson, for he pronounced his last words
with great precision: “I wish to forgive some people for what they are now
doing to me.”
Guards slipped the mask over Vanzetti’s face, and “current
was applied,” 1400 to 1800 volts. At 12:26:55 a.m., Bartolomeo Vanzetti was
pronounced dead, and his body removed from the chair. He was 39 years old when
he died.
≈ ≈
Robert Elliott, another job professionally done, took a taxi
back to his hotel.
The special police forces stationed around the prison went
off duty.
In Detroit, Sacco-Vanzetti sympathizers in Cadillac Square
clashed with police. Anarchist Attilio Bortolotti was clubbed on the head. He
went to the offices of the Detroit News
later and learned that the executions had taken place as scheduled. “I don’t
know how I got home that night,” Bortolotti said.
In New York, protestors in Union Square sobbed uncontrollably
when the executions were announced. Valerio Isca and his comrades eventually
“went home to Brooklyn on the subway. When we emerged at the Montrose [Avenue]
station, we were still crying.”
There were tears, too, in the Italian neighborhood of
Federal Hill in Providence. The executions were a “moment of great defeat,”
Thomas Longo recalled.
It rained all night in Boston. At home with her family,
waiting by the phone for news, defense supporter Cerise Carman Jack felt
“emotional [and] sad.” Powers Hapgood, who had traveled to Boston to join the
last-minute protests, was devastated. “[N]othing has ever ravaged my soul and
feelings” like the executions, he wrote his parents.
Aldino Felicani and Gardner Jackson walked the dark streets
of Boston in silence that night. So did Felix Frankfurter and his wife. When a
radio loudspeaker blared out the announcement of the deaths, Marion Frankfurter
collapsed.
Luigia Vanzetti, at the apartment where she had taken
refuge, cried in silence. With her, Rosina Sacco wept without restraint. Her
“piercing cries” were said to echo through the neighborhood.