My family, Sacco & Vanzetti: 80 years ago today
At my grandmothers wake thirteen years ago, I chatted with 87 year-old great uncle Gaetano, imploring him to share childhood stories of his sister that I might include in the next day's eulogy at St. Margaret's Church.
"Uncle Guy" recounted life in Milford, Massachusetts during the fist decades of the 20th century, describing the intimate Italian immigrant community of which his family was part. After a few vignettes about trips to the beach and his father's battle with silicosis from carving tombstones, he said, "my father hung around with the Socialists back then. You know Sacco and Vanzetti? Sacco got married in our house. One time my mother hid Sacco's wife when the police arrested him and were looking for her."
In the subsequent months, I began researching my family history and geneology. My main interest was personal --I was curious about my ancestors and wanted learn first-hand accounts from the older generation before they passed away.
My devout Catholic Aunt, a nurse who cared for my grandmother in her final years, gave me a wonderful collection of my grandmother's family photographs, documents and letters. As she recounted for me the names and places of people in the photos, she repeated Uncle Guy's story. "Your Nana used to tell me how her father's friends and in-laws were Socialists. He was an atheist, you know. They were friends with Sacco and Vanzetti. Your father's cousin knows more about it."
Socialists, I later learned, was the adopted euphemism for Anarchists; Italian-Americans figured out it was better not to be associated at all with any Anarchists --even in the extended family.
After two more relatives confirmed the story of a Sacco-Vanzetti connection to my great-grandparents, I decided to search for a wedding photo. I figured if Sacco really was married in my great-grandparents' home, they or their house might be in a wedding photo. I tracked down Bob D'Attilio, a local historian of Sacco and Vanzetti and the Italian-American anarchist community. Looking at a map of Milford in an Italian cafe, we confirmed that my great-grandparents indeed lived just a few blocks from the Sacco's. He then read me a list of Italian surnames, asking if any sounded familiar:
"Bellafatto?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied, "that's my great-grandmother's maiden name."
"Isabella Bellafatto?"
"Yeah, my great-Aunt. How did you get her name?"
"From government reports I obtained through a FOIA request."
Some of my Milford ancestors, it turned out, were named in official government reports collected by the precursor to the FBI. These reports contained detailed accounts by informants and undercover operatives who attended local dances, community picnics and parties to monitor suspicious Italians.
While I am still learning many details about my Milford, MA relatives, I know for certain that none of them were dangeous radicals or Anarchists; they were mostly artisans, musicians, and laborers. My great-grandfather Giuseppe D'Agostino, the stone carver, was indeed an avowed freethinker who distrusted organized religion. I suspect that like many of his generation, he grew-up in Italy in the wake of Pope Pius IX opposing Italian unification. But his wife, who I knew in my early childhood, attended church regularly, and their six children were utterly apolitical. Her sister Isabella Bellafatto, was indeed married to a man well-known in the community as an avowed Anarchist, labor organizer and troublemaker.
But like most immigrants, my ancestors simply clustered together among people from the Old Country and maintained social-ethnic support networks in a new land. They made friends among fellow Italians in their neighborhood, gave each other rides, and inevitably attended some of the same small-town parties, feast days and picnics. Some of the government reports of surveillance on these people were absurdly bland: "Local group hosted dinner and dance...about a hundred people attended, ate food, played music... couples danced..."
On this 80th anniversary of Sacco & Vanzetti's execution, many people will appropriately revisit questions about the death penalty, FISA, free speech, the current exploitation of terrorism fears to politicize the judicial system, and so forth. For me, questions around how our country treats immigrants looms largest.
I've just read about a hundred pages of Bruce Watson's new book on Sacco and Vanzetti, and heard the author speak in Boston Tuesday night. He remarked that after reading all the court transcripts and newspaper accounts of the day, he felt that anti-Italian bigotry was a the most prominent force --though not the only one-- corrupting the judicial system that rendered a death sentence for Sacco & Vanzetti. Indeed, one must read contemporaneous accounts of Italians immigrants --who received nothing like the paradoxical charm of today's Soprano's-- to appreciate how completely alien, suspicious and detested were people like my relatives in the eyes of "real" Americans (Watson quotes a newspaper article noting the bizarreness of spaghetti while marveling at Italians' aplomb at eating it).
These accounts remind me of today's impulses toward Muslims and Latinos, blared over right-wing radio and experienced by even the most generous spirits among us every time we pass a group of women with their heads covered, or ponder a new Mosque in the neighborhood. They prompt me to ask how much we have yet to learn from the Sacco & Vanzetti experience when even today, an immigrant in Milford might meet an unexpectedly early demise.
Given how broadly and casually poor Italian immigrants were swept-up by police back then, I also can't help but feel fortunate that my great grandfather was not with Nicola Sacco or his friends when he was arrested on a trolley for being "suspicious." If indeed my great Grandmother gave shelter to Rosa Sacco, who knows how close she and Giuseppe might have been to arrest, deportation or worse in that climate of fear?
I may never know how close to tragedy my relatives were 80 years ago. It is sobering enough in 2007 to think that they were under surveillance by the US Government --just for being poor Italian immigrants in Milford.