Reverend Donald Lothrap Reverend Donald Lothrap, 93, was Minister of the famous Boston Community Church for 40 years and knew many of the participants for the defense in the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. Lothrap remembers the appeals case and still believes that Sacco and Vanzetti were unfairly convicted, a conclusion he first made during the trial as a student at Tufts University.

This was a case that was emblematic of a lot of troubling things that were going on in this country and in the world. It was right after the First World War, it was right after the Russian revolution. It was at a time when people in this country were very fearful. The world as they knew it was changing rapidly, and foreign evil was coming to the shores of America. Sacco and Vanzetti were spokespersons for those fears. They were admitted anarchists and they were big proponents of that calling.

The fact that they were executed and were visible proponents of an alien ideology has led to the fact that this case is very unlike many other cases in this country. The fact that their plight touched the lives of many who wanted to come to the aid of immigrants makes this case different. The fact that the outcome -- their innocence or guilt -- is uncertain even after the long breadth of history is something that captures the interest of many Americans.

I was in school, I think I was a sophomore [at Tufts University] at the time and I had read about the case because it was in the papers quite frequently and because of the interest of my teacher, Dr. Clarence Skinner. I happened to mention my concern about Sacco and Vanzetti being punished for something they didn't do and this businessman said to me, "They should die anyhow, whether they are guilty or not." I assume he thought that the reputation of Massachusetts would be jeopardized if anarchists and Italians were not punished.

If you read the letters of Vanzetti, particularly, you will find a distinctly pacifist element in his attitude towards life. These people were not killers. They not only were against the war, they were against any war.

As young people and college students we were disappointed in our judicial system. We weren't proud of the state for doing what it did in Sacco and Vanzetti's case.

People in Massachusetts were swallowed up in the war effort and those who did not encourage or accept the war were, in a sense, enemies. More than that the economic situation in the post war period was so dubious that people were worried about their income and therefore anybody that fooled with the system, like socialists or anarchists, were people who had to be called in to question.

My personal belief was that Sacco and Vanzetti were simply not guilty. Everything about the case that I'd learned about in their writing, their attitude, their statements, the fact that the money was never found, the fact that witnesses were inconsistent and that evidence was suppressed, all these things put together made me more and more convinced as I grew older that they were not guilty.

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