Sacco and Vanzetti were sent to the electric chair in 1927 for a double murder committed during the course of a payroll robbery in 1920. After a long series of appeals they died protesting their innocence, though the evidence suggests otherwise. Woody Guthrie was commissioned to write a concept album about them, and it was only natural that a generation later, Joan Baez would be solicited to contribute to the soundtrack of a biopic, which was launched on the world in 1971.

With lyrics by Baez and music by Ennio Morricone, this song actually begins with an extract from the sonnet The New Colossus, which was written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 as part of a fund raising drive for the Statue of Liberty. She died in 1887, but later her all but forgotten sonnet would find its way into the Statue itself. Lazarus was a classical scholar, and although like many daughters of the wealthy she had leftist leanings, she would have been horrified to see her most famous work incorporated into an ode to two convicted murderers. >>