The Trial of Sacco & Vanzetti

Alexys Boonkokua & Davis Lucky Senior Division Group Website

Process Paper Picking a topic was rather difficult for us. Alexys had a list of topics in her interest and I had a list as well. Of course, none of our chosen topics coincided. We narrowed it down to a list of four, two from her list and two from mine. From discussions with people in our classes, we realized that other groups already chose my topics. After ruling out those two topics, we consulted our teacher to see which topics fit the theme the best. Our teacher brought to our attention that Sacco and Vanzetti was an interesting topic, but also one that would be harder to research. With this challenge in mind, we decided to research this topic. We started our research by searching Google for Sacco and Vanzetti. To get us familiarized with the subject we read Wikipedia articles and found websites from the sources on these articles. From these sources we found other sources and so on. Later we found saccoandvanzetti.org, which, conveniently, had an extensive bibliography. Using this website as a starting point, we searched for the books, newspapers, and website articles listed in their bibliography to further our knowledge on the case. In addition to researching the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, we also searched for information about the Red Scare, which impacted the time period during the case. For images regarding the case, we found several punch cartoons and newspaper article headlines. Since we consider ourselves to be generally tech-savvy, we thought that using a website as a medium was a good way to convey our ideas. To begin formatting our website, we created an outline of how we wanted it to look on a piece of scratch paper, including the images and quotes we wanted to use with each section. We then logged into our Weebly account and started making the finished product. With already having the outline done, bringing the website to life became a simple task. By just inserting our previously conceived statements into the website editor and making simple adjustments to the page and how it could be navigated, the formation of the website came very quickly. Our topic relates to the NHD theme, Rights and Responsibilities, because this case stirred up the debate on what rights immigrants and non-native US citizens really had. Also, it represents how the judicial system of Massachusetts failed to uphold their responsibilities of being constitutionally fair to the public. The trial in itself caused the public to question how justly, or unjustly, the US legal system acted regarding those who held opinions different from their own. The presiding judge of the case, Judge Thayer, based his judgments on a personal bias rather than the facts and evidence presented during the trial. His opinionated actions during the case reflected how inconsistent and prejudiced the legal system was at the time. This clearly shows the lack of rights some people had and how the people who were sworn to protect these rights disposed of that responsibility. Word Count : 499