Back in the United States, veterans were returning home. Workers who avoided striking during the war were now demanding wage increases to keep pace with spiraling inflation. Over 3,300 postwar strikes swept the land. A small group of radicals formed the COMMUNIST LABOR PARTY in 1919. Progressive and conservative Americans believed that labor activism was a menace to American society and must be squelched. The hatchetman against American radicals was President Wilson's Attorney General, A. MITCHELL PALMER. Palmer was determined that no Bolshevik Revolution would happen in the United States.
Communism was “eating its way into the homes of the American workman.” Mitchell Palmer
Mitchell Palmer
From 1919 to 1920, Palmer conducted a series of raids on individuals he believed were dangerous to American security. He deported 249 RUSSIAN IMMIGRANTS without just cause. The so-called "SOVIET ARK" was sent back to Mother Russia. With Palmer's sponsorship, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was created under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover. In January of 1920, federal agents broke into the homes of suspected anarchists without search warrants, jailed labor leaders, and held about 5,000 citizens without respecting their right to legal counsel. Palmer felt that American civil liberties were less important than rooting out potential wrongdoers. Eventually most of the detainees were released, but some were deported.
The Sacco-Vanzetti Case
Sacco & Vanzetti
On April 15, 1921, two employees of a shoe warehouse in South Braintree, Massachusetts, were murdered during a robbery. The police investigating the crime arrested two Italian immigrants named On April 15, 1921, two employees of a shoe warehouse in South Braintree, Massachusetts, were murdered during a robbery. The police investigating the crime arrested two Italian immigrants named NICOLA SACCO AND BARTOLOMEO VANZETTI.
Sacco and Vanzetti maintained their innocence, but they already had a strike against them: they were ANARCHISTS and socialists. Just a little over two weeks after their arrest, they were found guilty.
"I wish to say to you that I am innocent. I have never done a crime, some sins, but never any crime. I thank you for everything you have done for me. I am innocent of all crime, not only this one, but of all, all. I am an innocent man. I now wish to forgive some people for what they are doing to me." Vamzetti's last words
Protesting the Verdict
Many people, particularly fellow socialists, protested the verdict, saying the two men were convicted more on political and ethnic prejudice than on any real evidence. Indeed, four years later, another man said he had committed the crime with a local gang.
Despite appeals, Sacco and Vanzetti were never granted a retrial. When they were sentenced to death on April 9, 1927, protests erupted around the country. But to no avail — the men were executed on Aug. 23, 1927. They claimed they were innocent until the moment of their deaths.