January Fourteenth

IF IT had not been for this thing, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died unmarked, unknown, a failure.
Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph.
Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man, as now we do by accident . . . . Our words, our lives - our pains: nothing.
The taking of our lives - lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddlar - all!
That last moment belongs to us - that agony is our triumph.

-- BARTOLOMEO VANZETTI, in a letter to his son before Vanzetti's execution
Photo from Wikipedia; Vanzetti on the right
Innocent or guilty?