Biography
Vincent Buccafori was an Italian immigrant shoe-worker in Brooklyn, New York who in 1911 killed his foreman in what he and his defenders described as self-defense after years of workplace abuse. Initially convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, his sentence was commuted to 15 years and later reduced to 10 years at Sing Sing following a major Italian-American labor-defense campaign by the IWW, the Industrial Workers Defense Conference, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. He became a touchstone case for working-class self-defense in the pre-WWI labor press.
Case
Sing Sing Correctional Facility
