Volume 28, Number 17 · November 5, 1981
America's Dreyfus Case
By Francis Russell
The Black Flag: A Look at the Strange Case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
by Brian Jackson
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 208 pp., $12.95
From its obscure beginnings the case of Sacco and Vanzetti developed into the American case of the century, the linked names echoing across the years, a symbol of man's injustice to man. At the time of their arrest in May 1920, the pair aroused so little interest that Boston papers scarcely mentioned them in a few inaccurate back-page paragraphs as suspects in the South Braintree holdup-murders of the previous month. After their anarchist comrades had formed a defense committee a socialist newspaperman sent from New York to investigate reported back: 'There's no story in it. Just two wops in a jam.' Yet seven years later Stalin called the Sacco-Vanzetti case the most important event since the October Revolution.
Review, 3085 words
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