SOURCES AND
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In spite of the great amount of material that may be found in print about the Sacco-Vanzetti case, important new information came to light during the writing of Tragedy in Dedham, much of it from the following persons. While many of them hold opposing views, I am grateful to them all for giving me of their knowledge and time:
Ben Bagdikian, Dr. William C. Boyd, Alfonsina Brini, Beltrando Brini, Paul J. Burns, Frank W. Buxton, Albert L. Carpenter, John Conrad, Anthony W. DiCecca, Barbara B. Dolliver, John Dos Passos, Michael J. Dray, Max Eastman, Herbert B. Ehrmann, Aldino Felicani, Michael C. Flaherty, Frank S. Giles, the late James M. Graham, Alden Hoag, John Hurd, Frank J. Jury, Suzanne La Follette, Isaac Don Levine, the Reverend Donald G. Lothrop, Eugene Lyons, Charles A. McCarthy, Robert A. McLean, Robert H. Montgomery, Mary DeP. Murray, Shelley A. Neal, Willis A. Neal, Tom O’Connor, James Rorty, Joseph Sammarco, Charles E. Sands, the late Dr. Warren Stearns, Michael E. Stewart, the Reverend Hillyer H. Stratton, Upton Sinclair, Jac Weller, Otto Zausmer.
For permission to quote passages from their writings about the case I am indebted to Dr. Ralph Colp, Jr., Max Eastman, Eugene Lyons, Robert H. Montgomery, and Upton Sinclair. Permission to quote from the manuscript of John F. Dever was granted by his executor; permission to quote from two letters in The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti was granted by the publisher, The Viking Press, Inc.
I wish also to acknowledge the help of the Braintree Public Library, the Boston Public Library, the libraries of the Boston Globe and the Providence Journal, the Boston Athenaeum, the Dartmouth College Library, and the Harvard Law School Library.
Among the many sources I consulted, the following were the most pertinent:
Colp, Ralph, Jr. “Sacco’s Struggle for Sanity.” The Nation, Vol. 187, No. 4 (August 16, 1958).
——. “Bitter Christmas: A Biographical Inquiry into the Life of Bartolomeo Vanzetti.” The Nation, Vol. 187, No. 22 (December 27, 1958).
Dr. Colp consulted the files of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health in writing these accounts of the periods when Sacco and Vanzetti were confined in mental institutions.
Dever, John F. Memoirs of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case. Manuscript, estate of John F. Dever.
Presents the Dedham trial from the jury’s point of view.
Dos Passos, John. “Facing the Chair.” Boston, Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, 1927.
Eastman, Max. “Is This the Truth about Sacco and Vanzetti?” National Review, Vol. XI, No. 16 (October 21, 1961).
Eastman’s account of Carlo Tresca’s assertion of Sacco’s guilt; incorporates the essence of Upton Sinclair’s “The Fishpeddler and the Shoemaker.”
Ehrmann, Herbert B. The Untried Case: The Sacco-Vanzetti Case and the Morelli Gang. Second edition, New York, The Vanguard Press, Inc., 1960.
A brilliant working-out of the hypothesis that the South Braintree crime was committed by the Morelli Gang of Providence, Rhode Island. It remains, however, only a hypothesis.
Frankfurter, Felix. The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti. Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1927.
Frankfurter, Marion D., and Jackson, Gardner. The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti. New York, The Viking Press, Inc., 1928.
The manuscript originals of most of these letters, plus others, are in the Harvard Law School Library. The published versions have been edited as to spelling and grammar, a number of class-war and anticlerical passages have been suppressed, and in some cases meanings have been altered.
The Good Shoemaker and the Poor Fish Peddler. Four reels of documentary motion picture film. Thought to be lost, discovered in Rockport, Massachusetts, in 1960 by Tom O’Connor, Donald G. Lothrop, and Francis Russell. Now in possession of Brandeis University.
Joughin, G. Louis, and Morgan, Edmund M. The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti. New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., 1948.
At the time of its publication the most balanced and comprehensive study. Morgan wrote the chapters on the two trials and their legal aftermaths; Joughin dealt with the historical, sociological, and literary aspects of the case.
Lyons, Eugene. Assignment in Utopia. New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., 1937.
Montgomery, Robert H. Sacco-Vanzetti—The Murder and the Myth. New York: The Devin-Adair Co., 1960.
The first book attempting to prove that the trial and subsequent proceedings were fair and that the men were justly convicted. While arid in style, it offers a careful analysis of the evidence and presents many telling points requiring detailed answers from those who think otherwise.
Morelli, Joseph. Autobiography. Manuscript, 574 pages.
Copies are said to be in the possession of the author’s granddaughter, a Providence criminal lawyer, and Louis V. Jackvony, Jr., son of the one-time counsel for the Morellis.
Musmanno, Michael A. After Twelve Years. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1939.
An account, by one of the younger defense lawyers, of the last legal maneuvers.
Pinkerton Report on the South Braintree Holdup. Manuscript, Travelers Insurance Company, Hartford, Connecticut.
This report does not appear in The Sacco-Vanzetti Case: Transcript of the Record....
Record of Public Hearing Before Joint Committee of the Judiciary of the Massachusetts Legislature on the Resolution of Representative Alexander J. Cella, Recommending a Posthumous Pardon for Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Boston, Committee for the Vindication of Sacco and Vanzetti, 1959.
The Sacco-Vanzetti Case: Transcript of the Record of the Trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the Courts of Massachusetts and Subsequent Proceedings, 1920-1927. New York, Henry Holt & Co., Inc., 1928-1929.
The five volumes and supplemental volume include the complete record of the Dedham trial, a nearly complete record of Vanzetti’s Plymouth trial, the various appeals and their outcomes, affidavits concerning Madeiros and the Morellis, a partial record of the Lowell Committee hearings, the minutes of the Parmenter-Berardelli inquest, and the Pinkerton report on the Bridgewater holdup.
Sinclair, Upton. “The Fishpeddler and the Shoemaker.” New York, Institute of Social Studies Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Summer, 1953).
Article expressing Sinclair’s doubts of Sacco’s innocence and reporting Fred Moore’s similar doubts.
Vanzetti, Bartolomeo. “The Story of a Proletarian Life.” Boston, The Sacco-Vanzetti New Trial League, 1924.
Zelt, Johannes. Proletarischer Internationalismus im Kamp um Sacco und Vanzetti. East Berlin, Dietz Verlag, 1958.
Drawing on records in Moscow, this book contains valuable information about the Communist-controlled development of the protest movement in Central Europe and the directed demonstrations inside the Soviet Union. Its balancing of facts, however, cannot always be relied on. Typical of its distortions is Zelt’s quotation from Putj MOPR, the organ of the International Red Aid, to the effect that “in 1926 the students of the University of Brockton, in spite of a ban by reactionary professors, unanimously chose as their graduation thesis ‘The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti.’” There is, of course, no college or university in Brockton, but according to the Boston Herald of June 3, 1927, “discussion of the Sacco-Vanzetti case by the class in current events in the local high school has been banned by the history teacher, Miss Sarah McGrory, on the theory the students are not old enough to understand it. The action was taken by the teacher after the class, in its usual manner of selection of a subject for discussion, voted in favor of the Sacco-Vanzetti case.”