Correspondence and press release by Aldino Felicani and Gardner Jackson, August 1957
Description:
Here we have two documents from Aldino Felicani and Gardner Jackson: 1) focusing on the Gutzon Borglum bas-relief 2) a request that the guilty verdict be overturned on the 30th anniversary of Sacco and Vanzetti's execution.. Gardner Jackson was a reporter for the Boston Globe during the 1920s. While working as a reporter, his wife Dorothy urged him to look into the trial of Sacco-Vanzetti that was taking place in Dedham, MA. Jackson believed they were on trial for their beliefs rather than the crime. By 1926, he left the Globe to become the Secretary of the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee. Aldino Felicani, who founded the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee and devoted his life to the cause of Sacco and Vanzetti. This document discusses the placement of Gutzon Borglum's bas-relief of Sacco and Vanzetti on the Boston Common or another location that gets significant public exposure. There are three Sacco and Vanzetti bas reliefs in the Boston area. The sculpture was never installed in the building it was intended for and, through the years, was rejected by one city or state official after another. Over time, the original bronze sculpture was lost, but a plaster mold was recovered. In 1997, on the 50th anniversary of the executions, Boston Mayor Tom Menino and then-acting governor Paul Cellucci formally accepted the sculpture. Plans were discussed to strike a new bronze cast. And yet, the plaster mold now sits in an obscure room of the Boston Public Library. One version of the relief is on display in the Community Church of Boston in the Lothrop Auditorium. An aluminum cast of the proposed monument is housed in the Gardner Jackson Memorial Room, located in Brandeis University's Goldfarb library. Even decades after their deaths, the committee continued their work to exonerate Sacco and Vanzetti.
