Bartolomeo Vanzetti

For Bartolomeo Vanzetti, coming to America was an act of rebellion.

Bartolomeo was born in 1888 into a highly respectable, devoutly religious, deeply conservative family in a tiny, northern Italian village. A bright, hard-working student, he dreamed of a professional career, maybe as a lawyer or a priest. But his father was determined that his eldest boy learn a trade. So when Bartolomeo was 13 years old, he was apprenticed to a baker in the nearby town of Cuneo.

Bartolomeo tried to make the most of it, gradually gaining the skills that moved him from apprentice to journeyman, from small-town Cuneo to the big city of Turin. But he hated the relentless work, suffered from a terrible bout of homesickness, and, though he never admitted it, resented his father for forcing him into what he once called "this miserable life."  Ever so slowly he began to turn away from his father's world. He started to doubt his family's religious commitments and conservative politics, drawn instead to some of the radical ideas that ran through the places he worked. And he thought about moving to America, a place his father had once visited and despised. His mother's unexpected death in late 1907 sealed his decision. In June 1908 he left Italy for New York City.

Though he had marketable skills, Bartolomeo struggled to find his place in America. He spent his first six years in the country moving from place to place, searching for steady work and a community he could call his own. That's the journey you can follow on this website. It's the sort of journey many immigrants made in the early days of the twentieth century.

While he wandered, Bartolomeo found his great passion. By 1914, at the latest, he was a devoted follower of Luigi Galleani, one of America's most militant anarchists. That same year, Bartolomeo finally found a home, settling among a small group of fellow anarchists in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Except for a brief move to Mexico in 1917, he stayed in Plymouth until the night of May 5, 1920, when he and his comrade Nicolo Sacco were arrested for murder.

Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with killing two men in the course of a hold-up. Their fellow anarchists immediately announced that their friends were being persecuted for their political beliefs rather than for the crime itself. The evidence against them was weak, as even the FBI privately admitted. But in July 1921 they were convicted and sentenced to death. By then, their case had become an international cause celebre, the subject of constant protest and agitation. For six long years Bartolomeo's supporters fought his conviction, in the court on and on the streets. Finally, they exhausted every legal appeal. On August 23, 1927, as protests swirled around the world, Bartolomeo was ushered into the death house at Charlestown State Prison, strapped into the electric chair, and put to death. In that moment, a poor immigrant became an international symbol of justice gone awry.