Sacco-Vanzetti

About this record

Documentary collection on the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti — Italian-American anarchist immigrants convicted of the 1920 South Braintree, Massachusetts payroll robbery and murders, tried in 1921 in what became the most internationally-publicized political-prisoner case of the early-20th-century United States. Despite a worldwide defense campaign — including Albert Einstein, Felix Frankfurter, John Dos Passos, Bertrand Russell, Anatole France, and the labor and anarchist movements of multiple continents — Sacco and Vanzetti were executed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on August 23, 1927. The case established the modern U.S. anti-political-prosecution legal-defense tradition.