American's feared communism, a political system based on ruling from one government party. Communists took away private property and replaced it with government owned businesses.
The Red Scare
The Red Scare
- Russian revolutionaries created a Communist state in which they waved red flags in desire for a world revolution
- A Communist party formed in the U.S. and 70,000 joined
- The citizens of America grew fearful when the U.S. Communist party mailed bombs to government businesses and leaders
- General A. Mitchell Palmer wanted to combat this
- General Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover tracked down communists, socialists, and anarchists, people who oppose any form of government
- They invaded homes and businesses
- They put many into jail or deported them without a trial
- The public quickly believed that General Palmer was full of it
- Many Americans felt nativism, prejudice against foreign born people
- Italian born immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested and charged with robbery and murder of a guard and factory master because witnesses said the people who actually committed the crime were Italian
- Even though Sacco and Vanzetti had alibis, the judge was prejudice, and the jury sentenced them to death
- Protests occurred, and poems were even written about the mistreatment, saying the men were mistreated because of their nationality and them being radicals
- In 1961, a test showed that a pistol owned by Sacco was the one used to kill the man, but there was no proof that he was the murderer
Bartolomeo Vanzetti said, "In all my life I have never stole, never killed, never spilled blood... We were tried during a time... when there was hysteria of resentment and hate against people of our principles, against the foreigner. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian and indeed I am an Italian."