1920 (47 page)

Sacco and Vanzetti were indicted for the payroll robbery on September 11, 1920, and, according to the scenarios linking the three men, Buda, fearing that he might soon be joining his friends behind bars, went into hiding. But he was not seeking shelter so much as a private place to plot his revenge. He could not allow his two friends to be incarcerated or, should it come to that, executed without a sign of protest. “After selecting a target,” writes Susan Gage, “he made his way to New York, where he assembled the horse, wagon, and bomb materials. After depositing his load on Wall Street the morning of September sixteenth, he left for Providence, acquired a passport, and fled to Naples,” where he would live more than four decades longer than those he was alleged to have murdered. Like Galleani, with whom he surely visited from time to time, he never returned to American shores.

Avrich admits that Buda's identity has not been proven and, at this late stage, never will be. Strangely, incomprehensibly, his name is not recorded anywhere in the Bureau of Investigation's files on the bombing.
But, says Avrich, Buda must be considered the leading suspect. The Wall Street bombing “fits what we know of him and his movements. I have it, moreover, from a reliable source and believe it to be true.”

Gage identifies that source as Charles Poggi, a New York waiter and earlier Italian immigrant. Although apparently not a Galleanisti himself, Poggi knew many of them, considered some of them
paisani
, and once told Avrich that Buda's nephew openly bragged about “my uncle's bomb.” At this stage, it seems more reasonable to accept Avrich's conclusion than to reject it. There are no holes in his story, and no alternative conclusions that seem nearly as convincing.

MISSING FROM A PROMINENT ROLE
in the investigation, which went on for twenty years, was Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. By the end of 1920, with the job continuing to wear on him, he still had not fully regained his health, and his reputation was in decline because of his raids and the subsequent harassment of innocents simply because of their foreign birth. His title notwithstanding, he was gradually being forced to the outside of American law enforcement's elite. He had also been left outside the field of potential Republican presidential nominees, with few besides himself taking his candidacy seriously. Soon, the Harding administration would be voted into office, and Palmer would be replaced as attorney general by Harry M. Daugherty.

As for the BOI, behind-the-scenes control was rapidly passing to Palmer's young lieutenant, J. Edgar Hoover, who was just as likely as his nominal boss to harass innocents, but was much more sly and even destructive in his methods. Hoover would wield his control over the agency that replaced the BOI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for half a century, always serving the cause of law and order, but not always paying attention to justice.

The same, of course, could be said of Palmer and his methods of reacting to immigrants in 1920. He had always believed that foreigners were behind the Wall Street bombing, and as time went on he narrowed the field to anarchists and then to Italian anarchists. Although his scorch-the-earth methods cannot be condoned, it seems that—after so much time has passed, and with the case file still open somewhere on a
dusty shelf at FBI headquarters—his conclusion was the right one after all. However irresponsible his behavior, however passionate his prejudices, A. Mitchell Palmer was one of the few people who knew the truth about the most ominous event in this year that so few people understood at the time and even fewer seem to understand now.

F
OR THE PAST TEN YEARS,
which is six books out of a total production of ten, Deborah Celia of the Westport, Connecticut Public Library, has been my researcher. Now she has quit on me. Just walked out, turned her back, closed the door behind her. Her cover story is that, after a long and admirable career at the library, she has decided to retire—and I admit it might have a few grains of truth to it. But no matter; I insist on taking her departure personally.

Information-gathering is not as easy as it seems. It sometimes requires creativity as much as diligence; information is not always stashed away where one might think. Debbie, however, has consistently outwitted the stashers, refusing to be thwarted by even the most arcane of filing systems. I have come to believe that facts she cannot find are facts that don't exist, that events she cannot track down are events that didn't occur. God, I'll miss you, Debbie. Then again, you're still going to have a computer with you in Florida, aren't you? Perhaps it isn't over between us yet. I was thinking that maybe you could leave me your phone number, and … well, perhaps it would be better if we talked about this privately.

The Westport Public Library, however, has been, and continues to be, much more than a one-woman show. Under the directorship of Maxine
Bleiweis, who manages to be bubbly despite her ceaseless labors, it has become a gem of New England learning and conviviality, an institution like no other of its size in the country. My thanks go to staffers Susan Madeo, who procured hard-to-find volumes for me, and to those at the reference desk, especially Caryn Friedman, Margie Frielich-Den, and Sylvia Schulman, for assistance with this and other books of mine.

Then again, Sylvia has retired, too.

Is it something I said?

I also express my gratitude to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh, and Planned Parenthood for providing materials accessible nowhere else, never before published. I would like to have offered thanks to the NAACP office in either New York or Washington, but neither had the courtesy to return my numerous phone calls, and thus I could not bring the esteemed Carter G. Woodson as fully to life as I would have liked.

Speaking of bibliographies, Yale University's Beverly Gage did not set out to do me a favor when she wrote
The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terrorism
, but her book was, more than any other volume upon which I relied for
1920
, indispensable. Hers is the definitive book on what may be fairly described as the definitive event of my own volume.

And I must express similar appreciation to Doris Weatherford, who wrote so comprehensively in
A History of the American Suffragist Movement
.

Phil Gaskill was the book's copy editor, and I thank him for his diligence, which resulted in several fewer errors in the finished product. Thus, any errors that remain are entirely Phil's fault, for not having spotted those, too. (Once, just once, I wanted to see an author eschew humility and immaturely blame someone else for mistakes that are entirely his fault. I have taken it upon myself to do so—but not sincerely.)

In a similar vein, I must express my appreciation to Bob Van Der Linden, the chairman of the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Bob provided me with a brief, but much needed, education on aviation in 1920.

Editor and associate publisher Jessica Case, who makes more contributions to her books than anyone else with whom I have ever worked, is a
wonder. I believe she offered eight suggestions to improve the manuscript. I considered them diligently. She was right in all eight cases. Then she went on to supervise matters as diverse as secondary rights and publicity, in the latter case with the tireless efforts of Iris Blasi.

My long-time agent, Timothy Seldes, suffered a stroke several years ago, and sold his business, the better to take care of himself. I hope you are taking care of yourself well, Tim, and that you know you are always on my mind as I work.

But,
mirabile dictu
, along comes Linda Konnor. My new agent, Linda does not usually represent volumes of this kind. For deciding to represent this one, and for steering me to Pegasus books, which are distributed by Norton, I will be forever appreciative.

1920: The Year That Made the Decade Roar
is my tenth book. I mean no offense to others who performed similar tasks, but the cover design for the book you hold in your hands is my favorite of them all. Thank you, Andrew Smith. And thank you, Maria Fernandez, for the interior design of the volume.

And thank you, Toby Burns. Thank you
so
much, Toby Burns. My son and I were having a steak dinner in Manhattan one night when he asked me the title of my forthcoming book. “
The Year That Made the Decade Roar:
” I said, “
A Surprising History of America in 1920
.” He took a few more bites of steak, not looking at me. Then: “Nah,” he said, “that's too clunky. How about just …” and he spoke the title by which the book has ever after been known. My agent and editor were both so pleased with Toby's suggestion, which I e-mailed them at nine the next morning, that by nine-thirty they had changed my title to his on all of their various working copies.

I also think that, in this “acknowledgments” section, I should acknowledge something about myself. My last name might consist of but a single syllable ending in a consonant, but I am half-Italian, the half that counts. I have spent more time in Italy than in any other country except my own, and while there have listened to men and women speak their native tongue as if it were music. Which, to my ears it is. I do not understand a word they say; I simply listen to the concert of their sounds. My favorite place as a child was the kitchen of my maternal grandmother, Henrietta
Yacovoni, and I was raised on homemade pasta with homemade sauce and homemade bread to wipe the bowls. The scent of her kitchen filled the house and brightened the spirits.

The point of this seeming digression? The fact that so many villains, and suspected villains, in my book are Italians is just that: fact. If I were going to demonstrate bias against any nationality in the preceding, it certainly would not have been against my own
paisani
. But certain numbers of them behaved ignobly in the matters previously considered, and I have had no choice but to report their misbehavior.

And a final note, which I admit is more of a digression than the previous one but irresistible to me nonetheless. Eubie Blake, who with Noble Sissle wrote the music and lyrics for
Shuffle Along
, accomplished far more than that in his career. He was responsible for such standards as the rousing “I'm Just Wild About Harry” and the touching “Memories of You”; and was honored by having those and many more of his tunes collected in the 1978 Broadway musical
Eubie!
. Further, he was presented with at least seven honorary doctorates and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

And I knew him. Or, more properly, met him. In 1983, as an NBC News correspondent, I was assigned to cover the festivities for his hundredth birthday. My reports appeared on the
Today
show and
NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw
. My recollections of the event are dim, but I remember that Blake was fragile—happy, mostly coherent, but fragile. We spent several hours together as my crew set up its gear and we chatted off the record; as the interview was conducted on the record; and as the crew wrapped up and stowed its gear and Eubie and I went back to more informal chatter. The conversation never waned.

I mention this because it is an extraordinary feeling to produce a historical volume set almost a century ago and find myself writing about someone who is not only part of the book but was, for a brief time, part of my life—a man who, in fact, I “knew.” I am left with a feeling of sweet eeriness, as if I had been part of 1920 myself.

Such a remarkable year it was!

Boston Herald (BH)

Boston Post (BP)

Brooklyn Daily Eagle (BDE)

Collier's Weekly (CW)

Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (DSR)

Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University (JEH)

KDKA “History of Broadcasting and KDKA Radio, found in files at Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh (KDKA)