By Jon Curley
I am very excited about the imminent publication of Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s short story EVENTS & VICTIMS by PM Press. I edited the work and am delighted to share Vanzetti’s creative work with readers nearly a hundred years after it was written. Speaking of events and victims, I was in Braintree, Massachusetts last month and took pictures near the site where Sacco and Vanzetti’s names became tied to a crime which still reverberates internationally. On April 15, 1920, a paymaster and guard were shot during a robbery of the Slater and Morrill Company. At the height of the Red Scare, these two Italian immigrant anarchists were convicted of the murders and executed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1927. Evidence was flimsy but political and xenophobic bias against these radicals guaranteed that the state would destory them.
In future posts, I shall round out the story of Vanzetti and his written story. Now, I want to share these recent photographs from ground zero of these men’s persecution. Right in the heart of downtown Braintree, this thoroughfare is often busy but eerily serene considering its notoriety in American history.
