Instead of Columbus Day, Italian-Americans Should Celebrate Sacco and Vanzetti Day on August 23

In this op-ed, Teen Vogue’s Lucy Diavolo argues that, out of respect for Indigenous Peoples Day,

Italian-Americans eager to celebrate their heritage should replace October’s Columbus Day with Sacco and Vanzetti Day on August 23.

Lucy Diavolo

October 14, 2019

Black and white image of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco both wearing suits and handcuffed together at the wrist

Bartolomeo Vanzetti (left) and Nicola SaccoFotosearch/Getty Images

Despite this, Columbus is still championed by many Italian-Americans eager to see themselves as part of the tapestry of U.S. history. But I think they’d be better served lionizing another set of controversial Italians: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a pair of immigrant anarchists who were executed after a controversial trial amidst a wave of anti-Italian, anti-immigrant sentiment in the early 20th century.

" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">A 1927 article from The Atlantic written by Felix Frankfurter, who was later " href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/felix_frankfurter" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939, laid out how Sacco and Vanzetti’s case was mishandled. Accused of murdering two men during a 1920 payroll robbery, the duo’s imperfect grasp of the English language made their 1921 trial difficult; they reportedly misunderstood questions and their testimonies were hard to understand. Dozens of witnesses testified on both sides (some with accounts more dubious than others), alibis were presented, and questions were raised about police conduct.

At trial, " href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Vanzetti implied that they had no idea they were arrested for murder or robbery charges and said instead their affiliations with the much-maligned anarchist movement seemed to be the issue, explaining why they may have seemed skittish to law enforcement. Vanzetti " href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">said in his testimony that he was asked by police “if I am a radical, if I am an anarchist or Communist, and ... if I believe in the government of the United States.”

According to " href="https://time.com/4895701/sacco-vanzetti-90th-anniversary/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Time, Sacco was a shoemaker and Vanzetti was a fish peddler, and the duo’s life as impoverished immigrants was what led them into anarchist organizing. During testimony at his trial, " href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sacco explained how coming to the U.S. as a working-class immigrant impacted his politics, saying that he had to work much harder in the United States to survive and had struggled to support his family. He lamented the imprisonment of socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, who he called “one of the great men of this country.”

“He wanted the laboring class to have better conditions and better living, more education,” Sacco " href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">said of Debs. “But they him in prison. Why? Because the capitalist class, they know, they are against that.”

Coupled with this class analysis was a devout pacifist streak in Sacco’s beliefs. Questioned over his refusal to participate in the American military during World War I, he said it was a “war for the great millionaire[s]” and questioned why he should fight on behalf of the capitalist class.

“I don't believe in no war. I want to destroy those guns,” Sacco said. “That is why I like people who want education and living, building, who is good, just as much as they could.”

Even these brief excerpts illustrate the courageous politics that landed the duo in hot water. Their beliefs are a model for progressive politics even today — no small feat for a couple of working-class immigrants caught up in a court case that saw their ideas on trial more than their deeds.

Black and white image of a crowd from 1927 holding signs reading A PROTEST STRIKE CAN SAVE OUR MARTYRS BOYCOTT...

A 1927 New York City protest on Sacco and Vanzetti's behalf.

Sacco and Vanzetti’s trial was officially for murder charges, but the fact that their politics became central to it was no surprise as it came in the midst of " href="https://www.mass.gov/info-details/sacco-vanzetti-the-red-scare-of-1919-1920" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a federal government crackdown on subversive activities. According to Frankfurter, the duo was already on a Department of Justice watchlist. The lawyers prosecuting the case against Sacco and Vanzetti highlighted their radical and pacifist politics at trial, playing to patriotism and general anti-radical sentiment.

Frankfurter summarizes the trial’s flaws, " href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1927/03/the-case-of-sacco-and-vanzetti/306625/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">writing, “By systematic exploitation of the defendants' alien blood, their imperfect knowledge of English, their unpopular social views, and their opposition to the war, the District Attorney invoked against them a riot of political passion and patriotic sentiment; and the trial judge connived at — one had almost written, cooperated in — the process.”

Further, Frankfurter added, there was reason to believe “that the case against these Italians for murder was part of a collusive effort between the District Attorney and agents of the Department of Justice to rid the country of Sacco and Vanzetti because of their Red activities.”

Sacco and Vanzetti were found guilty in 1921, but their case took years to work through the courts. Even though, as Frankfurter points out, it was learned during that time that there was ample evidence an outlaw band known as the Morelli gang were the true culprits, it wasn’t enough to convince any judge that another trial was needed. As noted by " href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sacco-and-Vanzetti" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Encyclopedia Britannica, the debate over whether or not one or both of them were guilty lingered after their executions, but there is a historical consensus that a second trial should have been granted.

Sacco and Vanzetti were executed by electric chair on August 23, 1927. It’s on this day — " href="https://www.mass.gov/info-details/sacco-vanzetti-proclamation" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">already celebrated as Sacco and Vanzetti Day " href="https://saccoandvanzetti.org/sn_display1.php?row_ID=12" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">since 1977 — that I recommend we celebrate the duo as victims of a state-sponsored campaign targeting immigrants with radical politics. In doing so, Italian-Americans can acknowledge how much has changed for them in the decades since anti-immigrant sentiment targeted them and celebrate solidarity not with a colonial monster, but with a couple of working-class stiffs who got a bum rap because of who they were and what they believed.

Black and white image of a front page of the New York Daily News from August 23 1927 reading DEAD SACCO VANZETTI with...

A headline the day of the executions.

New York Daily News Archive/Getty Images

Sacco and Vanzetti arrived in the United States after leaving Italy " href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lm0SCspDOjQC&q=1908#v=snippet&q=1908&f=false" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">in 1908, and the historical context of that timing matters. Starting around the close of the 19th century, millions of " href="https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/immigration/italian3.html" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Italians moved to the United States.

In this history, Italians in the United States should see a touchpoint to learn how oppression operates in the country. But instead, the community has opted to celebrate a man who had an instrumental role in creating the colonial quagmire that the U.S. grew out of.

TItalian-Americans today should understand just how far we’ve come from being the targets of white supremacy to, in our community’s lionization of Columbus, celebrating it. By virtue of our whiteness, we have gained privileges in U.S. society that may never be available to today’s Latinx immigrants striving and surviving in the modern xenophobic moment, nor to the Indigenous peoples whose lands were stolen and very existence was threatened by the colonial forces Columbus helped spearhead. In honoring Sacco and Vanzetti instead, we can honor the communities still on the outside of privilege.