8. The Palmer Raids The Attorney General used the attacks to initiate a widespread clamp-down on radicalism. He brought in the young and ambitious Justice Department lawyer, J. Edgar Hoover, to head a campaign of raids and mass arrests. Later known as the "Palmer raids," the widespread attack on radicals were largely Hoover's operation. He organized raids to be carried out in three different cities on January 2, 1920. Not possessing search or arrest warrants, the enforcers paid no regard to who was and who was not guilty of anything illegal. In the end, mass arrests were made and 249 people were deported including the prominent anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. Hysteria hit an all time high when Palmer announced that there would be an attempted Communist takeover on May 1 st , 1920, but when it didn’t happen, the hysteria dissipated. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman J. Edgar Hoover Mitchell Palmer
11. Sacco and Vanzetti On April 15, 1920, two men robbed and murdered a paymaster and his guard as they transferred $15,776 from the Slater and Morrill Shoe factory. Three weeks later, in the spirit of the anti-immigrant, anti-communist times, two Italian immigrants and known anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were accused and arrested for the crime, despite the scant evidence against them. Following a seven-week trial which many considered very unfairly manipulated by Judge Thayer, Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted on circumstantial evidence of capital murder and sentenced to death. Sacco and Vanzetti appealed their convictions and got a lot of support from those who opposed the death penalty and racism, but they lost and were executed in 1927.
