Biography
Roberto Elia was an Italian anarchist printer arrested in New York in early 1920 during the Palmer Raids and held incommunicado by the Department of Justice for deportation, together with Andrea Salsedo. Salsedo fell to his death from the fourteenth-floor DOJ offices in May 1920 — an event that helped spur Sacco and Vanzetti's fatal trip to New York — after which Elia was deported to Italy.
From Kenyon Zimmer's Red Scare Deportees index (kenyonzimmer.com, compiled from INS deportation case files): Active as a socialist in Italy from 1898, repeatedly arrested for political activity. After migrating to the United States, became a committed anarchist and propagandist. Worked as a typesetter for Carlo Tresca’s La Plebe in Pittsburgh, then for Luigi Galleani’s Cronaca Sovversiva in Barre, Vermont, before relocating to Boston and later New York. Member of the anarchist Gruppo Gaetano Bresci in East Harlem. Published the anarchist journals Domani (1919) and L’Ordine (1919–1920). Arrested in February 1920 on suspicion of printing the anarchist leaflets left at the sites of 1919 radical bombings. Held incommunicado with Andrea Salsedo in the Bureau of Investigation’s Manhattan offices. According to Elia, Salsedo was beaten during interrogation and, on May 1, 1920, jumped—or was thrown—to his death from a twelfth-floor window. Elia was deported on August 7, 1920.
After deportation, remained active in the Italian anarchist movement, largely escaping police surveillance. Selected at a January 1921 conference to co-edit a new anarchist newspaper, but the project was delayed and Elia died of tuberculosis in 1924 before its publication.
