 “Sacco
& Vanzetti: The Men, The Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind”
by Bruce Watson
Viking, $26,
434 pages
Any generation
subsequent to the Baby Boomers has had their collective heads filled
with tales of the unparalleled decadence, volatile politics and social
experimentation of the 1960s (and the first half of the 1970s, really),
that most storied of decades. What we’re
steered away from knowing is that the 20th
Century had a
decade at least comparable in its craziness and upheaval, if not more
striking: the 1920s.
The 1920s
was a decade that saw unprecedented sociopolitical schism in America.
Simultaneously, it was a decade that could be said to have introduced
the concept of “fun” to the masses of our country, with frank displays
of sexuality and heretofore un-thought-of levels of partying (even during
Prohibition, which only made alcohol sweet as a forbidden fruit).
This paradox
(being, who in the hell wants to admit that their great-grandparents
might have actually out-partied them?) is the backdrop for Bruce Watson’s
“Sacco & Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind.”
Some of us
know the story, and some of us don’t: In 1920s America, two recent
Italian immigrants (a particularly detested segment, at the time) were
active anarchists, a political party with similar leanings as the Socialists,
and a movement considered to be a slap in the face to traditional, post-World
War I American values. The two were unknown saps until they were accused
of perpetrating a daring daytime robbery and murder of two payroll clerks.
The ensuing
trial and guilty sentence, which resulted in their executions seven
years after their arrests, is still considered one of the most egregious
miscarriages of US justice in the 20th Century. They were
clearly innocent … or were they? Were they guilty? Were one of them
innocent and the other guilty? Were they innocent of the specific crime
but guilty of other dastardly acts? Were their deaths justified?
Watson knows
that with a case of this magnitude, there were no easy answers.
Yet, the
Sacco & Vanzetti case continues to enthrall, perhaps because it
seems so relevant to today’s political climate. After all, the country
has been split the last five years by an unpopular war. Although opinions
have ebbed and flowed, the conflict has often been divided by socioeconomic
lines in a way eerily similar to the case. Consider this observation
by Watson, and whether or not it sounds familiar:
“Opinions
on their guilt or innocence soon separated sophisticate from
‘rube,’ liberal from conservative, and those who feared authority
from those who implicitly trusted cops, judges and juries.”
One’s estimation
of the case essentially shapes one’s enjoyment of Watson’s book.
It’s a completely adequate account of one of the most famous murder/court
cases in American history, and especially for those who have never heard
of the case, it’s very entertaining, with ample domestic terrorism,
stays in mental hospitals, casual political arguments that result in
murder, and enough human drama for Shakespeare.
Where Watson
excels, though, is in his attention to context, making the reader realize
that the go-go 1920s was a decade of extremes: those of fun and those
of conflict, but also those of justice or injustice, depending where
one’s judgment of the case falls.
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