Published: 12/29/2019 6:01:47 AM

Modified: 12/29/2019 6:01:34 AM

The Bad Old Days by Jonathan Baird (Dec. 5) gives a good synopsis of anti-immigrant feelings and actions in the United States some 100 years ago. Those feelings, however, werent new to that era. With the beginning of the huge wave of immigrants at the end of the 19th century and continuing at least into the era described by Baird, Americans and the federal government did not want peoples from eastern and southern Europe, particularly, to enter this country.

Contrived reasons to exclude them were many and varied. They were dumb/stupid, dirty, lazy, politically dangerous, or lacked evidence of a job or financial independence. On the other hand, Scandinavians and, generally, Germans were acceptable because they were viewed as intelligent and industrious. Some of the undesirables were watched carefully. One was Emma Goldman, noted by Baird.

Goldman had become a naturalized citizen in 1887 through marriage to an immigrant who himself was a naturalized citizen. They divorced. By 1909, he was dead.

In that year, a federal judge revoked his citizenship as fraudulent. How does the government revoke citizenship from a corpse and why? How was a legal fiction. Why was so that the government could expel Goldman. Since her citizenship depended on his and now his was no more, neither was Goldmans. Finally in 1919 Goldman was deported to Russia.

To her dismay, she found that the workers paradise didnt exist. She moved to Toronto, Canada where she died in 1941.

Anarchists, of course, were on the watch list and many were swept up in the Red Raids. Most members of the Anarchist Party in the United States were Italian. Luigi Galleani was the titular head of the Anarchist Party here. He never became a citizen. During his time here, 1901-1919, he was a headache to the government. Finally, in 1919, he was deported to Italy. Since he wasnt a citizen, what took so long? No corpse was required.

Theres a connection of sorts between Galleani and the Anarchist Party and my family. One is through his daughter, Ilia Galleani. She was a doctor in Boston and delivered me. She also divested me of my tonsils.

The other is through Luigi and the Party. My father, Emilio Coda, was a Party member and friends with Luigi. In fact, in 1912, Luigi relocated from Vermont to Lynn, Massachusetts, my hometown. Evidence indicates that after Luigis deportation, my father considered himself the party chieftain. At least one other man felt he was and the battle was joined. Its interesting that there was a Party and that it had leaders, given that anarchism is opposed to government and structure of any sort.

While authorities questioned my father on a few occasions, he was not arrested. Ive never known why. He didnt hide his anarchist beliefs.

Anarchist Party actions didnt achieve positive results. It did provide fodder to the canons of those who moved to limit or deny immigration and to expel the unliked.

With respect to both my father and mother, they were active in the support of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two men who happened to be Anarchists and were arrested and ultimately convicted of murdering a Braintree, Massachusetts, shoe company paymaster the controversial Sacco & Vanzetti case that whether or not they were guilty, was rife with judicial error. Many people, worldwide, felt they were victims of anti-immigrant hysteria: they were Italian, they were Anarchists, they must be guilty.

The Boston Public Library archives holds letters between my father and Vanzetti written over the course of the seven years that the men were imprisoned until executed.

Jonathan Bairds main thrust . . . how bad things can get when hysteria commands public policy, is right on point. Back then, it was driven by public hysteria and used by government to bad ends. That is not much different from today. We need to be vigilant, lest bad things continue to happen to good people.

(Arnold Coda lives in Hopkinton.)

Read the original:

THE AGE OF HYSTERIA - Concord Monitor