Memorializing Sacco and Vanzetti in Boston

So what became of the bronze cast of Borglum’s bas-relief? This, also, is a mystery. Robin Borglum Carter’s findings point to the work being stolen, so it is entirely probable that the massive piece was melted down for the valuable bronze alloy and sold. Still, others hold out hope that the plaque, an incredibly heavy and unwieldy item, remains in a crate in storage in a warehouse or someone’s garage. Yet while the final draft of Borglum’s work is lost, extant in photographs only (at least for the time being), the work is not completely lost. One Sunday in June 1960, Aldino Felicani received a visit from ‘Mr. Greene, a gentleman dealing with storage merchandise.’xxxix Having found the plaster draft of Borglum’s work in storage, Mr. Greene, elsewhere referred to as an ‘unknown dustman’ and an ‘anonymous junkman,’xl sought out Felicani and was paid $50 for his services. Felicani donated the piece to the Community Church of Boston, an ‘active peace and justice congregation’xli in Copley Square, who accepted the sculpture as their altarpiece ‘on permanent loan.’xlii

The political climate, as it related to the legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti in Massachusetts, was still incredibly hostile in 1959 when Representative Alexander Cella’s petition to posthumously pardon the condemned Italians caused an eruption at a ‘raucous’xliii hearing. To the great horror and amusement of his dignified companions, anti-fascist Aldino Felicani, aged 68, held up a menacing fist and asked his friends, ‘Should we break the meeting up?’xliv A young law school student named Michael Dukakis also attended the hearing.xlv Eighteen years later, on the 50^th anniversary of the execution in 1977, Dukakis, then governor, proclaimed that the two workers had not received a fair trial due to pervasive anti-immigrant, anti-Italian, anti-radical biases. While there was backlash against the governor’s proclamation, this nonetheless marked a turning point. Unfortunately, Gardner Jackson passed away in 1963 and Aldino Felicani in 1967; neither lived to see the cause to which they had dedicated much of their lives vindicated in the official narrative of Massachusetts.

Perhaps brought on by executive acknowledgement of judicial malefaction, in 1979 the Boston Public Library called for a symposium on the case and its legacy. On this occasion, the Library formally accepted the mammoth collection of Aldino Felicani’s papers and relevant effects from his sons Anteo and Arthur Felicani, including the Borglum plaque. The Community Church of Boston was invited to participate and, before the transfer of Borglum’s plaster bas-relief to the library took place, had three metal castings made of the piece. A bronze casting now hangs in the Borglum Historical Center in Keystone, South Dakota. An aluminum casting hangs in the Gardner Jackson Reading Room at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. The third casting, also in aluminum, is the altarpiece at the Community Church of Boston.xlvi The 1928 plaster draft of Borglum’s work hangs outside the Rare Books and Manuscripts department on the third floor, down many a labyrinthine hall of the Boston Public Library. It was in this corner of the library on the 70^th anniversary of Sacco and Vanzetti’s execution that the press joined Mayor Menino and acting Governor Paul Cellucci in 1997 as the two formally ‘accepted’ the sculpture. Repeating the assertion that the anarchists had not received a fair trial, the politicians announced plans to have a bronze casting made and installed publicly in an undetermined site in Boston by the year 2000. Meeting little friction,xlvii this task was originally assigned to the Browne Trust Fund, who estimated the cost at $8,000.xlviii In January 1999, the Boston Globe reported that a group calling themselves the Sacco and Vanzetti Memorial Committee was working on having a memorial installed in DeFillipo Park in the North End, a project approved by the Parks Commission. A spokesperson from the Memorial Committee estimated that the project would cost $50,000 and that ‘several thousand dollars’ had already been raised.xlix Nothing seems to have come of these plans.

In September 2007 the John Adams Courthouse opened an exhibit, ‘The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti: Justice on Trial.’ Free and open to the public during the business hours of the headquarters of Massachusetts’ judicial branch, the exhibit is a series of placards, photographs and interactive multimedia sources in a small room detailing not only the varied aspects of the case, but the prejudicial socio-political context in which it occurred. Put together by a senior administrative attorney for the state Supreme Judicial Court and a graphic designer for the state Social Law Library, the exhibit is an instructive look into the legal system and the ways in which it can be misused. While the exhibit is not especially accessible to the average citizen, in terms of content and placement it is undeniably the most significant tribute to the anarchist workers to date. Two months after the exhibit opened, the Rose Kennedy Greenway Park was opened to the public in the North End. There, the public found a timeline of local historical events spelled out in a series of plaques. One of these, reportedly due to the advocacy of a private citizen of the North End, is about the Sacco and Vanzetti case.

In 2006, on the 79^th anniversary of Sacco and Vanzetti’s execution, a commemorative march took place in the pouring rain to Forest Hills Cemetery, where the two immigrants were cremated. The march was intended to bridge the perceived ideological gap between Boston’s ‘red’ anarchists, those primarily engaged in human rights and labor struggles, and Boston’s much prosecuted ‘green’ anarchists, those focused on environmental justice and animal rights. Though a few older leftists participated and migrant workers’ rights organizers attended, the march was composed overwhelmingly of young anarchists carrying flags and banners. Blaming ineffective outreach and inclement weather, and finding that the lessons of Sacco and Vanzetti’s case hold relevance far beyond their martyrdom to the anarchist cause, grander plans were made for the 80^th anniversary. What began as an attempt to organize a better march grew into a broader, intergenerational coalition of community, labor and immigrant rights organizers, anarchist historians, archivists and activists operating as the Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society. The group organized a series of educational, agitational and social events surrounding the 80^th anniversary of the execution.

Taken August 23, 2007. Courtesy of the Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society.

At the initiative of Boston City Councilor Felix Arroyo, who joined the march on the 23^rd decrying the persecution of immigrants, the death penalty and the state repression of dissent, the Boston City Council passed a resolution extending its ‘admiration to the Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society’ and declared August 23, 2007, Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Day in the City of Boston.l

As the 2007 march wound through Hanover Street on the North End, a Society member put up a temporary historical marker on the 256 Hanover Street building that had been used by the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee over 80 years earlier. On December 1, 2007, with the permission of the building’s proprietors, the Society installed and dedicated a new plaque to replace the one that had gone missing in the 1980s. Former governor Michael Dukakis was among the forty or so participants.

Former governor Michael Dukakis and Society member Jake Carman unveil historical marker. Courtesy of the Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Society.

August 23, 2008 saw similar commemorative events to the Society’s 2007 ones. City Councilor Chuck Turner presented the Society with a nearly identical resolution, declaring August 23, 2008 Sacco and Vanzetti Commemoration Day in the City of Boston. The Society has, all the while, been working to overcome the financial, logistical, and bureaucratic obstacles that have thus far prevented the public installation of a casting of Borglum’s work.