The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti: A New England Legend (11 page)

These words spoken by the preacher were an expression of what some people felt, and what others felt was expressed in other ways. Many, out of the depth of their feeling, decided to journey to Boston. Most of those who did this, came without any clearly preconceived plan of what they might accomplish. Deep within themselves, as within the Negro minister, there was a need and a desire to give sound in a mighty voice; but for that kind of rage and anger and protest, people must be disciplined and trained, and these people were neither disciplined nor trained for this sort of thing. Some of those who came to Boston were poets who knew that here was an anguish beyond their command of words; others were physicians, who sensed that here was a pain and an illness that no skill of theirs could heal; and still others, who were workers, sensed even more deeply that they themselves had been sentenced to death, and that man must not die without protest. Coming to Boston, these people went to protest meetings; they asked questions to which there were no simple or definitive answers; and most of them sooner or later turned their steps toward the State House where a picket line had been in motion for many days.

Some of them could not bring themselves to join the picket line. It was no small thing to step across the crevice of fear and wonder and habit and inhibition into the ranks of a picket line. Many of these people who had come to Boston had never before in all their lives seen a picket line, much less marched on one; it was new to them. They were not certain what it meant, what its intent was, or what it might possibly accomplish; and on the part of some of them, there was a feeling that all this was a little ridiculous, this marching to and fro, carrying signs, calling out slogans, and in effect, mumbling a prayer into the thin air, a bitter prayer that two men might not perish wretchedly. Therefore, some of these people could not bring themselves to join with the picket line. Though they willed their bodies to move toward it, a stronger counter-force overcame this subjective willing, and they stood paralyzed in a dim and heartsick awareness of what their paralysis meant, and of how many more than themselves it was symbolic. Not alone were some of those who had journeyed to Boston paralyzed, but millions like them who had not come to Boston, were also paralyzed, and thereby ineffectual, and would only weep impotent tears when an Italian shoemaker and an Italian fish peddler perished at last.

There were others, however, who were not paralyzed, who managed to push aside their own reluctance, and who stepped forward and took their places in the picket line.

“Lo and behold,” some of these said to themselves, “I have discovered a new weapon that I never dreamed of! A fine, strong weapon which I can use as well as another!”

They touched shoulders with people they had never seen before, and a current of strength flowed from shoulder to shoulder. Some of these people were young; others were of middle age and some were old; but all of them were alike in that they were doing something they had never done before and thereby discovered strength they had never possessed before. Many of them joined the picket line sheepishly, marched timidly at first, then more confidently, then with a new bearing which denoted pride and determination. They squared their shoulders, lifted their heads and straightened their spines. Pride and anger became a part of their being, and those who had remained empty handed at first, found themselves eagerly taking picket signs from others who had carried the signs for hours. The signs became weapons; they were armed, and they had a feeling, implicit if not wholly defined, that in this simple, almost ordinary act of marching together in protest with their fellow men and women, they had linked themselves with a mighty movement that stretched over the entire earth. New thoughts formed in their minds, and new emotions surged through them; their hearts beat faster; they knew sorrow in a way they had not known it before, and plain anger within them was turned into protest.

Again and again, the police engineered provocation against the picket line. During the first part of that day of August 22nd, the line was twice broken up, and each time, men and women were arrested and carted away to local police stations. This too was a new experience for many of those on the picket line: poets, writers, lawyers, small business men and engineers and painters who had lived all their lives in peace and enormous security, suddenly found themselves being handled and pushed and crowded like common criminals, their security gone and shattered, the law which had so long enfolded them protectingly, now a weapon of murderous anger turned against them. Some of these people were terribly frightened; others, however, met anger with anger and hatred with hatred, and in the very act of being arrested, underwent, a change that was to be with them and to affect them for all the rest of their lives.

For the workers who were arrested, the process was much simpler, for neither surprise nor fear accompanied what was to them a process neither new nor extraordinary. One of these people was a Negro worker, a sweeper from a textile mill in Providence, Rhode Island. He had taken this day off, the whole day, without pay, so that he might come to Boston and see what other people were doing, people who, like himself, could not bear the thought that death unopposed would overtake Sacco and Vanzetti. This Negro worker had not thought too much or too deeply about the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, but for many years it had been a part of his consciousness and of the world around him in a simple and direct manner. He had never combed through the evidence in the case, but now and again he would read something that either Sacco or Vanzetti had said, or something else that was a part of their backgrounds or which illuminated a part of their backgrounds; and reading this, he would understand, also in a simple and uncomplicated manner, that these two accursed men could not commit a crime, but were plain and ordinary working people like himself. Sometimes, indeed, he pondered with aching thoughtfulness over this identity, as when he read in a newspaper the following statement by Vanzetti in one of his published letters:

“Our friends must speak loudly to be heard by our murderers, our enemies have only to whisper and even be silent to be understood.”

The Negro had pondered for a long time over these few words, and they had in time become a part of his own decision. His decision took him, on August 22nd, to Boston, where he joined the picket line in front of the State House. He did not over-rate or under-rate this action; he recognized it for what it was, a very small action that would neither split the world asunder nor free the two men whom he had thought of for a long time as his friends. But all of his life, this man had fought against his own extinction, and had done his fighting with just such small and apparently hopeless actions, and he knew, through a wealth of practical experience, that to disdain such small actions was to disdain all action. He lived in no exalted dreams of what might be for himself tomorrow, but moved instead in terms of direct practicality for today.

In the hours he marched on the picket line, he was able to convey something of himself to the men and women around him. He was not a very tall man, but in the hard bulk of him there was an appearance of stamina and reassuring solidness. He had a square, pleasant face, and none of his motions or actions ever became either hurried or uncontrolled; and for these very reasons, he radiated an impression of his strength and conveyed to the people around him an added sense of security. He also walked easily on this task, as did many of the other workers, accepting the picket line as neither a rare nor an extraordinary moment in his existence. On the first occasion that the police tried to demolish the picket line and provoke arrests, he steadied the people around him, passed the word along, “Easy does it. Pay them no mind, and just let's us go on with our business,” and thereby helped the people on the line to maintain both their discipline and their composure. However, these slow and deliberate actions of his caught the attention of the police. Plain clothes men pointed him out to each other, whereupon, he was noted and marked, and his importance was assessed. In the small struggle and drama of the picket line, he was chosen for elimination; and the second police provocation was directed toward him. He was picked up and arrested, and at one o'clock in the afternoon on August 22nd, he was brought to police headquarters and put into a cell by himself.

This distinction and special treatment troubled him. He was one of almost thirty people who had been arrested, and among them were white shoe workers and white textile workers, housewives, a famous playwright from New York City, and a poet of international reputation; but all of them had been left together. Why, then, had he been separated from them and put by himself?

It was not long before his question was answered. Since this was the very last day before the execution, time was measured in hours or even in minutes, and therefore, whatever was going to happen, could not be too long delayed. He sensed this. He was in the cell only a little while before they came for him, and then they brought him into a room where a number of people awaited him. In this room were two policemen in uniform, two other policemen in plain clothes, and an agent of the Justice Department. Also in this room there was a male stenographer, who sat at one side of the room at a desk, his pad open in front of him, waiting for whatever might develop, for whatever sounds of agony or confession he might have to set down. The two policemen in plain clothes held, each of them, a length of rubber hose, twelve inches of hose an inch in diameter, and as he entered, he saw that they were bending the pieces of hose back and forth; and he had only to look at the hose, to look at the faces of the men in the room, to look at the drab bareness and ugliness of the room to which they had brought him, to know what awaited him. He was an ordinary and a rather simple man, this Negro worker, and when he understood what awaited him, his heart sank and he filled up with fear. His whole body tensed; he twisted himself from side to side, less in an attempt to escape than in involuntary and spasmodic protest of his physical being. Then the men in the room smiled at him, and he knew what their smiles meant.

The representative of the Justice Department explained to him why they had brought him there.

“You see,” he said to the Negro, “we don't want to make any trouble for you. We certainly don't want to cause you any pain or misery. We want to ask you some questions and we want you to answer them truthfully. If you do that, you have nothing at all to worry about, and you will be released in just a little while. That is why we have brought you here—to answer these questions. You are an honest man, aren't you, and a good American?”

“I am a good American,” the Negro replied earnestly.

The two plain clothes men stopped bending the rubber hose, and they both smiled at him. Both of them had wide, thin-lipped mouths; it made them look almost like brothers. They smiled easily and without any difficulty, but also without any humor.

“If you are a good American,” said the man from the Justice Department, “then we won't have any trouble at all, not one bit of trouble. What we want to know is one simple fact—who paid you to march on that picket line?”

“Nobody paid me,” the Negro answered.

Whereupon, the two plain clothes men stopped smiling, and the Justice Department man shrugged his shoulders rather regretfully. He stopped being as friendly as he had been before, but he was still not unfriendly.

“What's your name?” he asked the Negro worker.

The Negro told him. The Justice Department man asked him to repeat what he had said a little louder, so that the stenographer could get it. The Negro did this.

“How old are you?” the Justice Department man asked.

The Negro replied that he was thirty-three years old.

“Where are you from?” the Justice Department man inquired.

The Negro told him he was from Providence, and he had come to Boston that same morning on the New York, New Haven and Hartford train.

“Do you work in Providence?” the Justice Department man asked.

With this question, the Negro knew that it was no use at all for him to hope. No matter what he did from here on, he could not change things materially. If he did not tell them where he worked, they would find it out in their own good time and in their own good way, and in the process of finding it out, the music would begin. He knew just what kind of melody the music would play, and he knew who would dance and who would pay the pipers. He was afraid, and not ashamed to admit the fact to himself; and now he put off the final reckoning for a moment; let the music play later. He told them where he worked and they noted it down. He knew he would never work there again. He knew he would never work anywhere in this part of the country again. He had a wife and a three year old daughter, and because of this, there was an added sadness and poignancy in his knowing that he would never work anywhere in this part of the country again. But still, it was happening, and there was nothing at all that he could do about it except to let it happen. It was happening, but it had only begun to happen; and it would go on happening now.

“Why did you come to Boston?” the Justice Department man asked pleasantly enough.

“I came because I don't think Sacco and Vanzetti should just die like this, with no word or action of protest.”

“Do you think that by coming here you could prevent them from dying?”

“No, sir, I don't think that.”

“Then if you don't think that, you are just contradicting yourself, and nothing you say makes any sense. Does it make any sense to you?”

“Yes, sir, it does.”

“Suppose you tell me how it makes sense to you.”

“Well, sir, either I could do nothing, or I could come up here to Boston and see if maybe there wasn't something to do, something that I might do about them two poor folks.”

“Like what?”

“Like marching in the picket line today.”

The Justice Department man said, his voice suddenly high-pitched and angry, “God damn it now, you are a liar! I sure don't like to be lied to by a boy like you! It's not doing yourself any good to lie.”