You Souls Of Boston - Woody Guthrie

You souls of Boston, bow your heads

Our two most noble sons are dead

Sacco and Vanzetti both have died

And drifted out with the Boston tide

'Twas on the outskirts of this town

Some bandits shot two pay clerks down

On old Pearl Street in South Braintree

And they grabbed that money and rolled away

Sacco and Vanzetti got arrested then

On a trolley car by the plain clothed men

Carried down to Brockton jail

And laid away in a lonesome cell

The folks in Plymouth town did say

Vanzetti sold fish in Suassos Lane

His fish cart was thirty-two miles away

From old Pearl Street this fatal day

Sacco’s family hugged and kissed their dad

Said, «Take this family picture to the passport man.»

He was in that office, forty odd miles away

From old Pearl Street this fatal day

One lady by the name of Eva Splaine

Saw the robbers jump in their car and drive away

For a second and a half she seen this speeding car

She swore Sacco was the bandit man

It was twenty, or thirty, or fifty more

Said Sacco was not in the robber’s car

Judge Webster Thayer stuck by Eva Splaine

Said Sacco was the guilty man

Mrs. Sacco was heavy then with child

She walked to Sacco’s cell and cried

The Morelli gang just down the corridor

Signed confessions they killed the payroll guards

«We seen Mrs. Sacco pregnant there

We heard her cry and tear her hair

We had to ease our guilty hearts

And admit we killed the payroll guards.»

Judge Webster Thayer could not allow

The Morelli gang’s confession to stop him now

Sacco and Vanzetti are union men

And that verdict, guilty, must come in

The bullet expert took the stand

Said the bullets from the bodies of the two dead men

Could not have been fired from Sacco’s gun

Nor from Vanzetti’s gun have come

It was sixty-three days this trial did last;

Seven dark years come a-cripplin' past

Locked down in that mean old Charlestown jail

Then by an electric spark were killed

Old Boston City was a dark old town

That summer’s night in August the switch went down

People they cried and marched and sung

Every tongue this world around