The anarchist Italian immigrants were charged in 1920 with having committed 2 murders during a robbery. The whole world knew that the 2 innocent immigrants were being accused of the crime only because they were "radicals" and foreigners in a country experiencing a wave of repression against "the reds."

Despite the appeals, despite a recanting witness who later revealed the true culprits, despite a trial in which the prosecutor and judge predicted the ruling and despite world protests against the conviction, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in Massachusetts on August 23, 1927.

Fifty years later, in 1977, the then governor of Massachusetts declared that the 2 men had been unjustly condemned.

As written by U.S. historian Howard Zinn in his book The Other History of the United States Woodrow Wilson's attorney general, Mitchell Palmer, launched a series of raids in 1919 and 1920 under a recently enacted law that allowed the deportation of any or all foreigners opposed to the government or who would defend the abrogation of private property.

Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were among the first 249 deportees. Another 4,000 were arrested a month later, among them a friend of Sacco and Vanzetti, who died mysteriously in the hands of the authorities.

Upon finding out, the 2 immigrants began to organize a protest meeting in Boston and it was said that, facing repression, they armed themselves.

According to May Brooks' book The Other Gringo (published by La Jornada), Vanzetti loved music, Dante and other great names in literature. He also dedicated himself to studying why millions worked until dying in poverty while a few lived in wealth.

He worked in the stone quarries of Connecticut, as a laborer in Youngstown, Ohio, in the Pittsburgh steel mills and led a strike in Massachusetts.

"I learned that class consciousness was not a phrase invented by propagandists; it was a real, vital force and those who felt its meaning stopped being beasts of burden and became human beings," wrote Vanzetti.

Vanzetti was black-listed for his participation in a strike in 1916, sold fish and befriended his paisano, Nicola Sacco. Both opposed the First World War and joined a group of Italian anarchists who left the country to live in exile in Mexico during that war. Once the war ended, they returned to Massachusetts.

Both men participated in strikes and supported other labor causes, including those of immigrant workers.

But in 1920, both were already on the secret list of the Justice Department and were arrested on May 5, 1920, says Brooks in his book. The trial showed that they had nothing to do with the crime for which they were being charged, but were rather being tried for their political activities and positions.

On July 14, 1921 they were pronounced guilty and sentenced to die in the electric chair. "Son no inocente!" [The authorities are not innocent] shouted Sacco in the court room. "They kill innocent men." said Vanzetti calmly.

Having all appeals failed, including before the Supreme Court, popular protests were conducted throughout the entire country and the world. Appeals for clemency to the authorities came from important figures such as George Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein, Romain Rolland, Sinclair Lewis and H. G. Wells.

After naming the Deans of Harvard and MIT and a judge to study the case to recommend clemency, the governor accepted the recommendation to proceed with the executions.

The day of the execution, hundreds of thousands of persons participated in demonstrations throughout several states and cities. Police clashed with 50,000 demonstrators in New York and thousands more gathered in Boston to express their anger.

The night before, Sacco wrote a last letter to his son, Dante:

"Therefore, son, instead of crying, be strong so that you may comfort your mother. And if you wish to distract your mother from discouragement, I'll tell you what I used to do. Take her for a long walk in the peaceful countryside, to cut wild flowers, here and there, relax under the shadows of the trees...But always remember, Dante: do not play the game of happiness only for yourself...help the weak who cry out for help, help the persecuted and the victimized because they are your best friends; they are the comrades who struggle and fall like your father and Bartholomew, who struggled and fell...to win the enjoyment of liberty for all".

Four months before, Vanzetti wrote:

"If it had not been for this, I could have spent my entire life in street corners talking to men who despised me. I could have died without anyone having known about me, a total stranger, a failure. We are not failures now. This is our career and triumph. Never in our lives we could have hoped to have begun such struggle for tolerance, for justice, for the understanding of man by man, as we have now done by accident...The loss of our lives, the lives of a good shoe repairman and a poor fish salesman, everything. That last moment belongs to us, that agony is our triumph".