Tragedy in Dedham: The Story of the Sacco-Venzetti Case

In 1921 Massachusetts, two Italian immigrant anarchists were sentenced to death for a murder most Americans believed they didn't commit. The Sacco-Vanzetti case became a wound that never healed, exposing the raw class and cultural divisions in America during the Red Scare era. Francis Russell's definitive account reconstructs the trial that shocked the world: the biased judge, the questionable witnesses, the appeals that went nowhere, and the mobs that roamed the streets while the two men waited in their cells. Russell draws on extensive research and personal memory (he was a young man living in Dedham during the trial) to examine how a simple murder case became a referendum on what it meant to be American, to be foreign, to be radical, to be poor. The book remains the essential account of a case that divided a nation and continues to haunt our understanding of justice, prejudice, and the American promise.