Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants to the United States who were executed for murder by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1927. Their trial garnered worldwide attention in the 1920s, and some historians have argued that their execution was emblematic of American xenophobia at the time. In this lesson, students read two newspaper articles written from different perspectives to investigate how Americans felt about their execution at the time.
Image: Newspaper article of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927. From the Library of Congress.