Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (58 page)

Among the audience at Miami’s Bayfront Park was Giuseppe Zangara, a thirty-three-year-old Italian immigrant. Zangara had arrived in America in 1923, in the last wave of immigration before the restrictions specified by the 1924 reforms took effect. He became a naturalized citizen in 1926; at that point or perhaps earlier, as he started to pick up English, he began employing the English equivalent—Joseph—of his Christian name. According to his own later testimony he had conceived a mortal hatred for the rich and powerful while in his teens in Italy, although resentment toward his father, who had sent him to work at the age of six, seems to have colored his attitude toward authority as well. “Had you tried to kill in Italy?” he was subsequently asked. “Yes, the king,” he responded. “Why didn’t you kill the king?” “Because I didn’t have no chance.”

After clearing Ellis Island, Zangara settled in Paterson, New Jersey. He became a bricklayer—a union man—and worked steadily until 1926, by which time he had managed to save $2,500. At some point he developed stomach problems, which, together with his nest egg, prompted him to quit work. Thereafter he never held a regular job. He remained in Paterson during the early years of the depression, which touched him rather less than it did many of his neighbors. But his stomach got worse, and he interpreted its gnawing as a comment on the unfairness of life in a capitalist society. The pain sharpened in cold weather, and during the late autumn of 1932 he traveled to Miami seeking relief.

Yet his suffering continued, and he determined that the only remedy was the assassination of the American president. He would have gone after Hoover immediately, but the cold weather in the North persisted and he decided to wait till spring. At about the time he realized that by spring Hoover would no longer be president, he read in the Miami papers that President-elect Roosevelt was coming to town. His funds were running low, as he had discovered the dog races but not how to pick winners. Yet with eight dollars he purchased a five-shot .32-caliber revolver from a pawn dealer on Miami Avenue.

The newspapers had printed Roosevelt’s itinerary in detail, and Zangara met his boat at the dock. But the crowd and the close quarters there prevented him from getting an open shot. So he followed Roosevelt’s entourage to Bayfront Park. He waited amid the audience of more than ten thousand, assuming that a man of Roosevelt’s importance would speak for a long time. When Roosevelt, speaking into a portable microphone from the rear seat of an open car, finished after less than two minutes, Zangara was caught by surprise. Various dignitaries gathered around Roosevelt’s car to shake his hand, wish him well upon his presidency, and perhaps plant the seed of a federal appointment.

Chicago mayor Cermak was closest to Roosevelt when Zangara worked his way to within twenty-five feet of the car. Zangara, a short man, mounted a chair to get a clearer view of the president-elect. He pulled out the pistol and began shooting. The chair wobbled beneath him, and a woman standing nearby grabbed his arm. As a result, his five shots missed Roosevelt. One hit Cermak in the chest, wounding him grievously. Another hit Mrs. Joseph Gill, the wife of the president of Florida Power & Light, also causing serious injury. A third bullet creased the head of William Sinnott, a New York detective traveling with Roosevelt; a fourth nicked the scalp of a Miami resident; the fifth pierced the hand of a visitor from New Jersey.

Roosevelt was startled at the sound of the shots, but otherwise he displayed remarkable composure. “I heard what I thought was a firecracker, then several more,” he told reporters afterward. “The man talking with me was pulled back, and the chauffeur started the car.” At this point Roosevelt saw blood from one of those wounded. “I looked around and saw Mayor Cermak doubled up, and Mrs. Gill collapsing. Mrs. Gill was at the foot of the bandstand steps. As soon as she was hit she must have got up and started down the steps. She was slumped over at the bottom.”

Roosevelt ordered the driver to stop. The driver did so, a short distance from where the car had been. Roosevelt’s Secret Service detail countermanded the order, shouting at the driver to proceed, to get the president-elect away from the crowd. The driver hit the gas again. Roosevelt once more told him to stop, to make sure the wounded got to a hospital as quickly as possible. “I saw Mayor Cermak being carried. I motioned to have him put in the back of the car, which would be the first out. He was alive, but I didn’t think he was going to last. I put my left arm around him and my hand on his pulse, but I couldn’t find any pulse.”

Roosevelt ordered the driver to hurry to the nearest hospital. A Miami detective riding on the mudguard of the car looked at Cermak and said he was dying. Roosevelt agreed. But after a few blocks Cermak rallied. He straightened up a bit, and Roosevelt felt a pulse. “I held him all the way to the hospital, and his pulse constantly improved.” The car couldn’t go fast enough. “That trip to the hospital seemed thirty miles long. I talked to Mayor Cermak nearly all the way. I remember I said, ‘Tony, keep quiet—don’t move. It won’t hurt you if you keep quiet.’”

Cermak was the worst off of the wounded, and while the others were treated and began healing, the mayor hovered near death. In the meantime the authorities interrogated Zangara, who after expending his bullets had made no attempt to flee. The police descended upon him, and he was taken to jail on the nineteenth floor of Miami’s high-rise city hall. There the Dade County sheriff, state prosecutors, and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation questioned him to determine, most crucially, whether he had acted alone or as part of a conspiracy. “Was anybody with you?” they demanded. “No,” he said. “Nobody in Miami?” “No, no place.” How had he come to Miami? “By bus.” How long had he been there? “Two or three months.”

It was to these interrogators that Zangara revealed his animus against the rich and powerful—against “kings and presidents,” as he now put it. But he had shot several people besides Roosevelt, the questioners said. Had he intended to kill them too? “No, just him.” Had he realized he might hit other people? “No, just him. Just President.” Why did he want to kill the president? “Because the President—rich people—capitalists—spoil me when I’m six years old.” Did he hate President Roosevelt as a man? “As a man I like him all right.” But as a president? “President—always the same bunch.”

R
OOSEVELT HAD INTENDED
to leave for New York shortly after his Bayfront Park speech. But with Mayor Cermak’s life in the balance, he decided to remain in Miami. He stayed at the hospital long enough to learn that Cermak’s condition had stabilized and to speak with the other victims and then returned to the Astor yacht in the harbor.

Ray Moley had measured Roosevelt’s intellect during the previous year, but he had never observed his courage under—literal—fire. He was most impressed. “Roosevelt’s nerve had held absolutely throughout the evening,” Moley wrote. “But the real test in such cases comes afterward, when the crowds, to whom nothing but courage can be shown, are gone. The time for the letdown among his intimates was at hand. All of us were prepared, sympathetically, understandingly, for any reaction that might come from Roosevelt now that the tension was over and he was alone with us. For anything, that is, except what happened.” Or, rather, what did not happen. “There was nothing—not so much as the twitching of a muscle, the mopping of a brow, or even the hint of false gaiety—to indicate that it wasn’t any other evening in any other place. Roosevelt was simply himself—easy, confident, poised, to all appearances unmoved.”

The attempted assassination wasn’t a total surprise to Roosevelt. As a lifelong student of the presidency, he hardly needed reminding that three presidents had fallen to assassins’ bullets. Nor could he forget that Uncle Ted had been shot and nearly killed during the campaign of 1912. (As it happened, Theodore’s son Kermit had been on the Astor yacht and was with Roosevelt in Miami that day.) “FDR had talked to me once or twice during the campaign about the possibility that someone would try to assassinate him,” Moley remarked. “To that extent, I knew, he was prepared for Zangara’s attempt.”

Moley continued: “But it is one thing to talk philosophically about assassination, and another to face it. And I confess that I have never in my life seen anything more magnificent than Roosevelt’s calm that night.”

T
HE WHEELS OF
justice moved more swiftly in those days, at least in Florida, than they would later. Zangara was brought to trial five days after the shooting and pleaded guilty to four counts of attempted murder. The lawyers assigned to his defense raised the possibility of an insanity plea, but he refused. “My client has insisted on his guilt,” the head of the defense team told the court. “He scoffs at the idea that he may be insane.”

Neither was he repentant. “Don’t be stingy,” he shouted when the judge sentenced him to eighty years in prison. “Give me more—give me one hundred years!” Prior to sentencing, the judge allowed the defendant to be questioned, in order that the court could assess his state of mind. Zangara reiterated his indictment of capitalism. “Capitalism kill me,” he said. “My stomach hurt all the time. I kill someone—that makes it fifty-fifty.” Asked if he was sorry he had attempted to kill Roosevelt, he replied, “No, no, no—I am only sorry because I did not kill. I am sorry about nothing. Put me in the electric chair.”

This possibility remained. At the time of the trial, the other victims were on the road to full recovery, and Cermak seemed out of danger. But the state’s attorney reserved the option to retry Zangara for murder in the event Cermak died. (Cermak was well enough to comment on the proceedings. “They certainly mete out justice pretty fast in this state,” he said. “If the law could be enforced this swiftly in other states…it would have a great tendency to check crime.”)

But the trial and sentencing didn’t end the investigation into the possibility of a conspiracy. The FBI received numerous reports of links between Zangara and anarchist cells, between Zangara and the Communist party, between Zangara and an organization called the Sons of Italy, and even between Zangara and the Black Hand, the terrorist group behind the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which had touched off the World War. Another angle was that Cermak, rather than Roosevelt, was the real target. By one version of this story, Chicago gangsters were sore at Cermak for cracking down on their illegal operations. By another, they were upset at him for trying to grab a piece of the black market action for himself. Either way, they hired Zangara to eliminate Cermak. The fact that Zangara emphatically denied intending to kill the mayor simply demonstrated how clever the gangsters were.

The FBI pursued the leads in their several directions. The agency examined Zangara’s bank records; it tracked his whereabouts in the months and years before the shooting. It followed up alleged sightings of Zangara in unlikely places and examined possible connections between Zangara and persons reported to have spoken especially ill of the incoming president, including one Italian immigrant who pointed at a newspaper photograph of Zangara and muttered, “Damn fool, worthless shot, can’t hit anything”—this according to a man who overheard the remarks in a Manhattan barbershop and relayed them to the FBI.

None of the leads survived scrutiny. Meanwhile, however, Cermak took a sudden turn for the worse and died. Zangara was brought to trial again, this time for first-degree murder. He again pleaded guilty, again defiantly. He was sentenced to death, and was executed on March 20. “Lousy capitalists!” he shouted as the straps of the electric chair were tightened around his chest and arms. “All capitalists lousy bunch of crooks!”