The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti: A New England Legend by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page B

face was what we would call clear-cut, clean-cut face. Through here he was a little narrow, just a little narrow. The forehead was high. The hair was brushed back and it was between, I should think, two inches and two and one-half inches in length, and had dark eyebrows, but the complexion was a white, peculiar white that looked greenish.’”
    â€œThere is her description of what she had seen in that brief glimpse fourteen months before. Also, in the course of this recollection, she identified Nicola Sacco as the man she had seen. One would say, in the normal course of normal things, that such recollection under the circumstances, and such identification, is not only impossible, but to some extent, monstrous. Monstrous, that is, in a manner better explained through the experience of one Lewis Pelser. Like Miss Splaine, Pelser at first could not identify Sacco and Vanzetti, but again like Miss Splaine, he recovered remarkable powers of recall. At the time that Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested, Pelser was taken by the police to look at them. He stated that he could not possibly identify them as the criminals. Whereupon, Pelser, who worked for a shoe company closely associated with Slater and Morrill, the firm which had been robbed, was suddenly discharged and found himself jobless. A few weeks later, his power of recall freshened. He was re-employed by the same shoe company, and now he was suddenly able to identify Sacco and Vanzetti as the criminals. He was not the only one. In case after case, recollection and joblessness were intimately linked. Sometimes, when the weapon of discharge could not be employed, the District Attorney and those who cooperated with him on such matters, in their zealousness to bring the criminals to justice, used every manner of threat, both directly and by innuendo. Sometimes this procedure was so bare-faced that the proof of it remains for us in the trial record itself.”
    â€œIt is indeed a bitter thing to have to give voice to accusations such as these, and enumerate conclusions such as I have enumerated, but they are to the point in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. The execution scheduled for tonight is the logical outcome of that incredible and merciless trial. Certain people believe with great intensity that Sacco and Vanzetti cannot be allowed to remain alive. I state this gravely but unhesitatingly.”
    â€œIt is important to recollect that the crime at South Braintree took place at a particular time, a strange, and to some extent, awful time in the history of this country. The passions of the entire country were inflamed by the notorious mass arrests which were instituted by Attorney General Palmer. Reds and Bolsheviks were everywhere, on every corner, in every dark alley, in every factory, and particularly in those factories where workers murmured that their wages were insufficient to feed and clothe their families. Strangely, or not so strangely, this condition created bewhiskered devils who, loaded with bombs, were found behind every bush—and the identity of these Bolsheviks and agitators with Americans of foreign extraction was implied if not stated every day in almost every newspaper in the land. Millions and millions of people were led to believe that there was a radical threat to the very existence of this country as a free nation. Within this inflamed situation, a particularly cold-blooded and brutal crime took place here in Massachusetts, and the fairly trustworthy identification of the criminals as Italians, further inflamed already existing prejudices. As the accused, Sacco and Vanzetti are brought into a courtroom. They are unable to speak English. They are frightened, harassed, poorly clothed, unkempt. Witness after witness is called to the stand and asked whether these two are, or resemble, the people who took part in the crime more than a year ago, so quickly committed and so violent in its reactions on people and impressions left upon memory. Witness