The Splendid Dead: An American Ordeal

Abstract

It’s been eighty years since the Commonwealth of Massachusetts executed two immigrant workingmen, Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, for a murder they didn’t commit. Since then their story has become one of modern America’s great morality tales, a straight-forward symbol of justice warped, denied, and defiled.

This lecture offers a different reading of the iconic case. Beginning on the day the two men died, it will move back in time to tell a story that weaves together political extremism, terrorism, and government repression, a story not of innocence but of hatred, violence and betrayal. A somber tale from — and for — an age of fear.