Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T05:43:36.711Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sacco and Vanzetti, Mary Donovan and transatlantic radicalism in the 1920s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2020

Niall Whelehan
Niall Whelehan*
Affiliation:
University of Strathclyde
*
*School of Humanities, University of Strathclyde, niall.whelehan@strath.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1927 the Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston following a murder trial that was widely denounced for its anti-labour and anti-immigrant bias. From 1921 the campaign to save the two men powerfully mobilised labour internationalism and triggered waves of protests across the world. This article examines the important contributions made by Irish and Irish-American radicals to the Sacco-Vanzetti campaign. Mary Donovan was a leading member of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, and a second-generation Irish union organiser and member of Boston's James Connolly Club. In the 1920s she travelled to Ireland twice and appealed to Irish and Irish American labour to support the campaign. At the same time, Donovan and many of the activists considered here held ambiguous personal and political relationships with Ireland. Transnational Irish radicalism in the early-twentieth century is most commonly considered in nationalist terms. Taking a distinctly non-Irish cause – the Sacco-Vanzetti case of 1920–7 – allows us to look from a different perspective at the global Irish Revolution and reveals how radical labour currents reached into Irish and Irish-American circles during the revolutionary era, though the response to the campaign also indicates a receding internationalism in the immediate aftermath of Irish independence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 165 , May 2020 , pp. 131 - 146
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Boston Globe, 29 Aug. 1927.

2 Mary Donovan, ‘No tears for my youth’, unpublished draft autobiography (Lilly Library, Indiana University, Mary Donovan Hapgood papers). The manuscript contains several versions of chapters with no page numbers; the citations here reflect this. My thanks to the Lilly Library staff for their help during my research. I am also grateful for the comments and suggestions received at the Global Irish Revolution workshop at the University of Edinburgh, and at the Irish Centre for Histories of Labour and Class, N.U.I. Galway, where an early draft of this article was presented.

3 New Republic (New York) quoted in Michael Miller Topp, Those without a country: the political culture of Italian American syndicalists (Minneapolis, 2001), p. 262.

4 McGirr, Lisa, ‘The passion of Sacco and Vanzetti: a global history’ in Journal of American History, xciii, no. 4 (Mar. 2007), p. 1085Google Scholar.

5 Peters, Andrew J. quoted in Murray, Damien, Irish nationalists in Boston: Catholicism and conflict, 1900–1928 (Washington D.C., 2018), p. 116Google Scholar.

6 Deacon, Desley, Russell, Penny and Woollacott, Angela, ‘Introduction’ in eidem (eds), Transnational lives: biographies of global modernity, 1700–present (London, 2010), p. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Barrett, James R., History from the bottom up & the inside out: ethnicity, race and identity in working-class history (Durham, NC, 2017), pp 3–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 O'Connor, Emmet, Big Jim Larkin: hero or wrecker? (Dublin, 2015), p. 188Google Scholar.

9 Donovan, ‘No tears’; Francis Russell, Tragedy in Dedham: the story of the Sacco-Vanzetti case (London, 1963), pp 267–8.

10 Boston Globe, 21 June 1920.

11 Donovan, ‘No tears’.

12 Boston Globe, 28 June 1973.

13 Information drawn from the United States Federal Census, 1880, 1900, accessed via www.ancestry.com (2 Jan. 2020).

14 Bussel, Robert, From Harvard to the ranks of labour: Powers Hapgood and the American working class (University Park, PA, 1999), p. 102Google Scholar.

15 Donovan, ‘No tears’; Boston Globe, 8 Jan. 1928.

16 McKillen, Elizabeth, ‘Divided loyalties: Irish American women labor leaders and the Irish Revolution, 1916–23’ in Éire-Ireland, li, nos 3 & 4 (fall/winter 2016), pp 165–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burns, Catherine M., ‘Kathleen O'Brennan and American identity in the transatlantic Irish republican movement’ in Gleeson, David T. (ed.), The Irish in the Atlantic world (Columbia, SC, 2010), pp 176–94Google Scholar; Brundage, David, ‘American labour and Irish independence, 1916–1923’ in Saothar, xxiv (1999), pp 59–66Google Scholar.

17 Murray, Irish nationalists in Boston, p. 178.

18 Watson, Bruce, Sacco and Vanzetti: the men, the murders, and the judgment of mankind (New York, 2007), p. 265Google Scholar.

19 Donovan recalled they travelled in 1920, but O'Connor's contemporary writings place the trip in the summer of 1921: Union Telephone Operator (Boston), July 1921.

20 Donovan, ‘No tears’.

21 Ibid.; Mary Donovan Hapgood, ‘Review of R. M. Fox, Jim Larkin: Irish labor leader’, unpublished (Lilly Library, Indiana University, Mary Donovan Hapgood papers).

22 Eugene Lyons to Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, 26 Oct. 1921 (N.L.I., Sheehy Skeffington papers, MS 33,606 (8)).

23 Donovan, ‘No tears’.

24 Creagh, Ronald, ‘La classe ouvrière américaine et l'affaire Sacco-Vanzetti’ in Royot, Daniel (ed.), Les États-Unis à l'épreuve de la modernité: mirages, crises et mutations de 1918 à 1928 (Paris, 1993), pp 127–40Google Scholar.

25 Karson, Marc, ‘Catholic anti-socialism’ in Laslett, John H. M. and Lipset, Seymour Martin (eds), Failure of a dream? Essays in the history of American socialism (Berkeley, 1984), pp 82–102Google Scholar.

26 Sacco, Nicola and Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, The letters of Sacco and Vanzetti (New York, 1997), p. xxxviiiGoogle Scholar.

27 Avrich, Paul, Anarchist voices: an oral history of Anarchism in America (Oakland, 2005), pp 99–100Google Scholar.

28 Ward, Margaret, Fearless woman: Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, feminism and the Irish Revolution (Dublin, 2019), p. 247Google Scholar.

29 Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, The rebel girl: an autobiography, my first life (1906–1926) (1973; repr. New York, 1986), pp 23–30Google Scholar, 270, 300–32; Trasciatti, Mary Anne, ‘Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and the rise and fall of the Liberal–Radical Alliance, 1920–1940’ in American Communist History, xv, no. 2 (2016), pp 191–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Pernicone, Nunzio, Carlo Tresca: portrait of a rebel (New York, 2005), p. 92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Doyle, Joe, ‘Striking for Ireland on the New York Docks’ in Bayor, Ronald H. and Meagher, Timothy J. (eds), The New York Irish (Baltimore, 1996), p. 362Google Scholar.

32 Sidney Czira statement (M.A.I., B.M.H., W.S. 909, p. 49).

33 Flynn, The rebel girl, pp 329–32; Trasciati, ‘Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’, pp 209–10.

34 Trasciati, ‘Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’, p. 193.

35 For her part, Flynn made no mention of Donovan in her own recollections.

36 Flynn, The rebel girl, p. 333.

37 Donovan, ‘No tears’.

38 Russell, Tragedy in Dedham, p. 268.

39 Watson, Sacco & Vanzetti, p. 266.

40 In 1908 The Pilot was bought out by the Catholic church and became its official organ.

41 Donovan, ‘No tears’; Donovan to Michael Barry, 26 May 1927 (Boston Public Library (hereafter B.P.L.), Aldino Felicani Sacco-Vanzetti papers, Series 2 (S2) / Box 8 (B8) / Folder 33 (F33) / Item 2 (I2)).

42 Donovan, ‘No tears’. Donovan dates the trip to 1926 in her papers, but her letters to Vanzetti state that it took place in 1925 (Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, p. 155).

43 Lyons to Sheehy Skeffington, 26 Oct. 1921 (N.L.I., Sheehy Skeffington papers, MS 33,606 (8)).

44 Amleto Fabbri to James Larkin, 4 Feb. 1926 (B.P.L., Aldino Felicani Sacco-Vanzetti papers, S2/B7/F19/I2).

45 Vanzetti to Donovan, 22 July 1925 (Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, p. 163).

46 Vanzetti to Donovan, 9 Oct. 1926 (B.P.L., Aldino Felicani Sacco-Vanzetti papers, Series 1: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti correspondence and writings, 1916–1928, B2b/F4/I6).

47 Larkin to the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, 14 Nov. 1924 (B.P.L., Aldino Felicani Sacco-Vanzetti papers, B6/F49/I5).

48 Irish Worker (Dublin), 7 Feb. 1925. National newspapers did not report on this demonstration.

49 Irish Worker, 21 Mar. 1925.

50 Jack Carney to Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, 18, 19 July 1927 (B.P.L., Aldino Felicani Sacco-Vanzetti papers, S2/B9/F5/I1, 6); Carney to the SV New Trial League, 13 May 1924 (ibid., S4/B37/F5/I1).

51 Larkin to Donovan, 19 July 1927 (ibid., S2/B9/F5/I7).

52 Larkin to Donovan, 31 Aug., 27 Sept. 1927 (ibid., Sub-Series 3, B10/F7/I20, F8/I17); Irish Independent, 25 Aug.1927.

53 Gaughan, J. Anthony, Thomas Johnson, 1872–1963 (Dublin, 1980), p. 304Google Scholar.

54 Secretary of the U.S. consulate to Dept. of External Affairs, 30 July 1927 (N.A.I., DFA/1/GR/946 1927).

55 Labor Defender (Chicago), July, Sept. 1927.

56 Workers’ Republic, April, Aug., Sept. 1927; An Phoblacht, 12 Aug. 1927.

57 Irish Times, 6, 24 Aug. 1927; Irish Independent, 24 Aug. 1927.

58 Palmer, Bryan D., James P. Cannon and the origins of the American revolutionary left, 1890–1928 (Chicago, 2007), pp 24, 260–8Google Scholar.

59 F. W. Garrish to the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, 4 May 1927 (B.P.L., Aldino Felicani Sacco-Vanzetti papers, S2/B8/F22/I1). Gerrish was also the honorary secretary of the Irish Trade Bureau of Canada.

60 Robinson, Tim, Stones of Aran: labyrinth (Dublin, 1995), pp 318–19Google Scholar.

61 Boston Globe, 21 June 1920.

62 Labor Defender, Jan. 1926; O'Flaherty to the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, 23 Oct.1925 (B.P.L., Aldino Felicani Sacco-Vanzetti papers, S2/B7/F15/I6).

63 Labor Defender, July 1926.

64 Ibid., July, Sept. 1927.

65 Ibid., June 1927.

66 Avrich, Paul, Sacco and Vanzetti: the anarchist background (Princeton, NJ, 1991), p. 138Google Scholar.

67 Labor Defender, June 1927; Palmer, James P. Cannon, p. 277. Fitzpatrick had supported the 1920 boycott of British goods and shipping: Chapman, ‘John Forrest Kelly's Irish World’, p. 238.

68 Donovan, ‘No tears’; Watson, Sacco and Vanzetti, p. 335.

69 Palmer, James P. Cannon, pp 280–2.

70 Labor Defender, July 1926, Aug. 1927; Palmer, James. P. Cannon, p. 280.

71 Russell, Tragedy in Dedham, pp 335–8; Watson, Sacco and Vanzetti, p. 278.

72 Shachtman, Max, Sacco and Vanzetti: Labor's martyrs (New York, 1927), pp 63–4Google Scholar.

73 Donovan, ‘No tears’.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid.; Boston Globe, 26 Aug.1927.

76 Boston Globe, 29 Aug. 1927; Donovan, ‘No tears’.

77 Bussel, From Harvard, p. 103.

78 Kurt Vonnegut said he voted for Donovan; see the prologue to Vonnegut's Jailbird (London, 1992), pp xi-xii.

79 Mary Donovan, ‘Why do intelligent women marry’ (Lilly Library, Indiana University, Mary Donovan Hapgood papers); Bussel, From Harvard, pp 150, 228.

80 Boston Globe, 23 Aug. 1967; Berkshire Eagle, 6 Feb. 1959.

81 Palmer, James P. Cannon, p. 113.

82 Donovan, ‘No tears’.

83 Bussel, From Harvard, p. 102.

84 Murray, Irish nationalists in Boston, p. 120.

85 Tosiello, Rosario Joseph, ‘“Requests I cannot ignore”: a new perspective on the role of Cardinal O'Connell in the Sacco-Vanzetti case’ in Catholic Historical Review, lxviii, no. 1 (Jan. 1982), pp 46–53Google Scholar.

86 The Pilot, 27 Aug., 3 Sept. 1927.

87 Donovan, ‘No tears’; Boston Globe, 28 Jan. 1928.

88 Donovan to Felicani, 22 Jan. 1928 (B.P.L., Aldino Felicani Sacco-Vanzetti papers, S6/B49/F74/I3).

89 Irish World, 27 Aug. 1927.