The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti: A New England Legend by Howard Fast Page A
Authors: Howard Fast
Ads: Link
although what possible occasion could call them into action, no one on the picket line was able to say. The actual purpose of the massed police and semi-military preparations around the picket line was more to intimidate than to defend; and in this process of intimidation, the police were not wholly unsuccessful.
For three or four days, people concerned about the Sacco-Vanzetti case had been coming into Boston from all over the United States. When the final decision was made by the Governor of the Commonwealth that Sacco and Vanzetti must go to their death at midnight of August 22nd, it seemed to many people in many parts of the United States that they themselves could hear the low but bitter moan of anguish that arose out of Boston. This was felt by an amazing variety of people. Physicians and housewives and steel workers and poets and writers and railroad engineers, and even ranch hands riding on their lonely work in the far, far west, shared this peculiar and fearful intimacy with the lives and the hopes and the fears of. Sacco and Vanzetti. Execution is as old as mankind, and unquestionably the number of those who were innocent but went to their death, was great; yet never before in this land had an impending execution affected and shaken so many people.
In Seattle, Washington, the day before August 22nd, a Negro Methodist minister preached a sermon on the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. He began his sermon by recalling an experience he had had in the state of Alabama as a little child. Such experiences were common enough to Negroes born and raised in the South for a particular chord to be struck among his listeners; and the preacher went on to tell how, in the little town where he had lived, a cry for blood had filled the air. A poor, foolish, hysterical woman raised the cry that she had been raped; and then all the hounds of hell began to gallop at full pace. Even though he was just a little boy at the time, this Negro minister had consciously watched a web of circumstances tighten around an innocent man until finally the innocent man was lynched. The preacher now recalled the inevitability of these circumstances, and the anguish and suffering of the man trapped by them.
âWhat do I see in this case of Sacco and Vanzetti?â he asked from his pulpit. âI try to talk to you, my flock, as a man of God, which is not an easy thing. But I must also talk to you as a black man. No more can I shed my skin then I can shed, here in this life, my soul. I have been thinking a great, great deal about this case of Sacco and Vanzetti, telling myself that a Sunday would come when I could no longer keep silent and I would have to preach my sermon on it. I do not delude myself into believing that one sermon spoken by one voice will really alter the awful fate that awaits these two poor men. Neither can I delude myself into believing that my own silence should be justified by this understanding.
âLast night, I talked with my wife and my children of Sacco and Vanzetti. The five of us sitting there, all colored people whose crust of bread has at times been bitter indeed, found ourselves weeping. Afterwards, I asked myself why we had wept. I recalled that there have been those historians recently who claim that they cannot find spelled out in history, proof of the passion of our Lord, Jesus Christ. How foolish these people are! They seek for evidence of one Christ and one crucifixion, when the history of that time tells the story of ten million crucifixions. Yesterday I and my people were slaves in bondage; and two thousand years ago, there was an angry slave called Spartacus, who led his people against their bondage, and told them to rise up and make themselves free. When he was defeated, six thousand of his followers were crucified by the Romans. Who, then, will say to me that history makes no mention of the passion of Jesus Christ?
âAnd will someone a thousand years from today seek vainly in the pages of history to
For three or four days, people concerned about the Sacco-Vanzetti case had been coming into Boston from all over the United States. When the final decision was made by the Governor of the Commonwealth that Sacco and Vanzetti must go to their death at midnight of August 22nd, it seemed to many people in many parts of the United States that they themselves could hear the low but bitter moan of anguish that arose out of Boston. This was felt by an amazing variety of people. Physicians and housewives and steel workers and poets and writers and railroad engineers, and even ranch hands riding on their lonely work in the far, far west, shared this peculiar and fearful intimacy with the lives and the hopes and the fears of. Sacco and Vanzetti. Execution is as old as mankind, and unquestionably the number of those who were innocent but went to their death, was great; yet never before in this land had an impending execution affected and shaken so many people.
In Seattle, Washington, the day before August 22nd, a Negro Methodist minister preached a sermon on the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. He began his sermon by recalling an experience he had had in the state of Alabama as a little child. Such experiences were common enough to Negroes born and raised in the South for a particular chord to be struck among his listeners; and the preacher went on to tell how, in the little town where he had lived, a cry for blood had filled the air. A poor, foolish, hysterical woman raised the cry that she had been raped; and then all the hounds of hell began to gallop at full pace. Even though he was just a little boy at the time, this Negro minister had consciously watched a web of circumstances tighten around an innocent man until finally the innocent man was lynched. The preacher now recalled the inevitability of these circumstances, and the anguish and suffering of the man trapped by them.
âWhat do I see in this case of Sacco and Vanzetti?â he asked from his pulpit. âI try to talk to you, my flock, as a man of God, which is not an easy thing. But I must also talk to you as a black man. No more can I shed my skin then I can shed, here in this life, my soul. I have been thinking a great, great deal about this case of Sacco and Vanzetti, telling myself that a Sunday would come when I could no longer keep silent and I would have to preach my sermon on it. I do not delude myself into believing that one sermon spoken by one voice will really alter the awful fate that awaits these two poor men. Neither can I delude myself into believing that my own silence should be justified by this understanding.
âLast night, I talked with my wife and my children of Sacco and Vanzetti. The five of us sitting there, all colored people whose crust of bread has at times been bitter indeed, found ourselves weeping. Afterwards, I asked myself why we had wept. I recalled that there have been those historians recently who claim that they cannot find spelled out in history, proof of the passion of our Lord, Jesus Christ. How foolish these people are! They seek for evidence of one Christ and one crucifixion, when the history of that time tells the story of ten million crucifixions. Yesterday I and my people were slaves in bondage; and two thousand years ago, there was an angry slave called Spartacus, who led his people against their bondage, and told them to rise up and make themselves free. When he was defeated, six thousand of his followers were crucified by the Romans. Who, then, will say to me that history makes no mention of the passion of Jesus Christ?
âAnd will someone a thousand years from today seek vainly in the pages of history to
Similar Books
