Image::1 FROM THE DEATH HOUSE OF MASSACHUSETTS STATE PRISON - AUGUST 21, 1927
MY DEAR DANTE:
I still hope, and we will fight until the last moment, to revindicate our right to live and be free, but all the forces of the State and of the Money and reaction are deadly against us because we are libertarians or anarchists.
I write little of this because you are now a yet too little boy to understand these things and other things of which I would like to reason with you.
But if you do well, you will grow and understand your father's and my case and your father's and my principles, for which we will soon be put to death.
I tell you that for and of all I know of your father, he is not a criminal, but one of the bravest men I ever knew. One day you will understand what I am about to tell you: That your father has sacrificed everything dear and sacred to the human heart and soul for his fate in liberty and justice for all. That day you will be proud of your father; and if you come brave enough, you will take his place in the struggle between tyranny and liberty and you will vindicate his (our) names and our blood...
Remember, Dante, remember always these things; we are not criminals; they convicted us on a frame-up; they denied us a new trial; and if we will be executed after seven years, four months and 17 days of unspeakable tortures and wrongs, it is for what I have already told you; because we were for the poor and against the exploitation and oppression of the man by the man.
The documents of our case, which you and other ones will collect and preserve, will proof to you that your father, your mother, yourself, Ines [a friend of Mrs. Sacco with whom she and her children lived during the last years of the case] I and my family are sacrificed by and to a State Reason of the American Plutocratic reaction.
The day will come when you will understand the atrocious sense of the above-written words, in all its fullness. Then you will honor us.
Now, Dante, be brave and good always. I embrace you.
Bartolomeo
Excerpts of the letter from Tragedy in Dedham: The Story of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case by Francis Russell, McGraw-Hill, 1962.
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