Plaque and Prejudice

Governor Bradford recently refused to support the plaque in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti on the grounds that there was no point in "stirring up the bitter passions and prejudices of twenty years ago." Unfortunately the old passions and prejudices need no stirring up. They sit in on sessions of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and are the driving force behind the present campaign of loyalty checks; it is passion arising from prejudice that has purged individuals from private jobs and caused colleges to ban student leftist organizations.

The State of Massachusetts executed Sacco and Vanzetti for murder, but only two years later the Encyclopedia Britannica recorded that ". . . public opinion of the world felt the execution had taken place less upon the evidence than for the crime of holding extreme opinions." Today there is a more insidious movement spreading over the nation than the red hysteria that engulfed the early twenties. "The crime of holding extreme opinions" becomes a graver offense each day as more and more individuals do not express their true political beliefs for fear of economic and social organization.

Vanzetti's wish that their deaths might serve as a lesson so they would not have died in vain now echoes hollowly off the walls of the star-chamber, and the injustice of their execution draws a some-what less harsh parallel in other present denials of civil rights. The Bill of Rights may be aged but its vigor is occasionally renewed as when the Supreme Court stated in 1943 that, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." It might be added that belief cannot be coerced.

A plaque in Boston Common where Sacco and Vanzetti once freely expressed their beliefs would recognize an old injustice that has long demanded recognition. But what is needed even more today is a plaque in each city and town of America as a warning that intolerance and denial of freedoms during moments of passion may be regretted in the later calm.