On July 14, 1933, in New York, student Antonio Fierro became the first victim of fascism in America. Born in Bisaccia (Avenza) on December 25, 1911, after completing his high school studies in Melfi, he had joined his parents in New York a few years earlier. His father, anarchist bricklayer Michele Fierro, born in 1888, had been "targeted" by the fascist regime by registering a file in the Central Political Records Office. He was a reader and supporter of the important anarchist weekly "L'Adunata dei Refrattari," published in New York since 1922.
On the morning of July 14, Carlo Tresca, writing in the columns of "Stampa Libera," urged anti-fascists to attend the fascist rally, attended by approximately 200 khaki shirts and black shirts. The Khaki Shirts were a fascist military organization in Philadelphia, composed of Italian and American fascists recruited by Arthur Smith. They boasted of having twenty-five thousand members, and their program proclaimed they would swear falsely, kill anti-fascists, act as spies, praise Mussolini, and abolish Congress and replace it with a council of dictators. They also made no secret of their intention to stage a "march on Washington" to establish a fascist dictatorship, similar to Benito Mussolini's in Italy. The movement provocatively organized a meeting in Columbus Hall in Little Italy, Astoria, a working-class neighborhood in New York City populated by Italians who had not forgotten the oppression and abuse of the fascists. Many come from Philadelphia armed with truncheons and are protected by the underworld. About twenty young anti-fascists also attend the demonstration out of curiosity, and when Adolfo Siani, after a priest's prayers, makes a defense of Mussolini, a worker shouts "Down with Mussolini," a cry that must be punished, and the truncheons of Smith's hitmen, who had come from Philadelphia, spring into action, beating him and throwing him out of the hall. Calabrian tailor and well-known designer Fortunato Velona is savagely beaten. Antonio Fierro intervenes to defend him. Surrounded by fascists-despite being unarmed-he defends himself "like a lion," throwing punches at the attackers. Smith strikes him several times in the head with his whip. Then he is suddenly struck from behind by a revolver shot, knocking him to the floor and dying within moments.
For three days, thousands upon thousands of people paid their respects to the body of the young victim, who lived at 22238 Adams Place in the Bronx. On July 19, the coffin, carried on the shoulders of twelve young anti-fascists, was saluted as it left the home by the Anti-Fascist United Committee and the moving chant of the "Internationale." A large red banner read: "The sacrifice of Antonio Fierro demands unity of action in the fight against fascism." The procession was very long, and the police chief requested that lines of six people be formed instead of two. In Woodlady Cemetery in the Bronx, as the coffin slowly lowered into the grave, the band once again played "Red Flag" and the "Hymn of the Fallen." A shower of red flowers paid their last respects to the murdered young man. His untimely death was stoically accepted by the family of whom he was the only child. On the evening of July 19, 1933, the New York newspaper of the Communist Party of the United States, the Daily Worker, published the photo and an article about the funeral on its front page, headlined that as many as twelve hundred people had attended.
Athos Terzani, a young Florentine anarchist taxi driver, is charged with second-degree murder. He immediately tells police that Fierro's killer is Frank Moffer, whose real name is Moddiferri. While awaiting trial, Terzani is released on $15,000 bail.
"L'Adunata dei Refrattari" reported the assassination on the front page of its July 22, 1933, issue, also publishing a photo of the young man murdered "on the altar of freedom." The assassination occurred on the eve of the arrival of Italo Balbo-"a symbol of fascist banditry," "a beast dripping with the generous blood of so many Italian proletarians," the murderer of Don Giovanni Minzoni, so that even from the United States the bloodthirsty leader could carry "the customary cup of pure, red blood"-who had flown across the Atlantic.
In "L'Adunata dei Refrattari" of August 5, 1933, his father, Michele Fierro, after thanking his comrades and friends who shared in the grief over the tragic death of his son, "fallen in a fascist ambush," wrote: "The pain has been immense, but the comfort has been great in the sincere solidarity of the proletarian family, who have felt the beauty of my son's sacrifice. I would have liked my Antonio to spend his twenty years in other, more fruitful struggles for good, but it is useless to defy fate. From my son's grave I draw new energy to defend the common idea and make him our holy vengeance."
The newspaper reports a writing by Antonio Fiero found in a notebook:
Freedom of the press, freedom of thought, has brought about this change in me. Only now do I appreciate freedom more, and I am also convinced that in a country where freedom of the press does not exist, lies reign.[...]I am not a Catholic because religion is a lie; I am not a Fascist, because fascism is synonymous with the bourgeoisie, that is, the enemy of the people, the enemy of the working class. In place of religion, I have substituted the struggle for freedom, for class equality; in place of fascism, I have substituted other, more precise ideas, which aim at another, more satisfying, more beautiful, more lovable goal. I still don't know which party to choose: Socialism, Communistism, or even Anarchism. I like the latter better, but before making a decision, I want to know things thoroughly.
Carlo Tresca organizes the Defense Committee, chaired by the famous lawyer Thomas Norman.
At the trial, which took place from December 11 to 13, 1933, the former khaki shirt, the Jew Samuel Wein, claimed that he had been forced-under death threats from Smith-to accuse Terzani in order to save Frank Moffer, the real murderer. In April 1934, Smith was sentenced to three to six years for perjury, and Frank Moffer, who admitted to the murder, was sentenced to five to ten years for first-degree manslaughter.
"The Assembly of the Refractory" comments: "Fascism is the same in every latitude, under every guise: obtuse, fanatical, mercenary, bestial, perfidious. It kills its adversaries, and it has the alibi of impunity ready, the lie intended to 'prove' that its adversaries... killed each other."
«L'Adunata dei Refrattari» never forgets and two years later, in the issue of 20 July 1935, it remembers Antonio Fierro with sympathetic lyricism:
Twenty years!
The age of dreams, of audacity, of illusions.
Twenty years old! The age at which a man reveals himself.
He grew up in Italy. Far from his parents,
The black storm of fascism had surprised him at the age when he was soft wax and a frail flower .
What a fine recruit today for the war... liberating Abyssinia!
He studied. School might have diverted the spontaneity of his generous sentiment.
The fascist school. The school reconsecrated to the priest and the policeman.
Poor Fierro! They would have crushed him-a robust young man-in those cogs of bearded, bespectacled lies. They would have gagged him in those twisted coils stuffed with supreme wisdom!
Paternal and maternal love saved him from the black prison.
He came to America and his soul found itself, took free flight, and released itself into our hopes.
He was one of us.
Rebels. Innovators.
The years would give him greater knowledge of men and things. With greater boldness.
And he was in the fray.
And he was one of the first.
And he fell under the gunman's fire.
And the merciful hands of his companions picked him up.
And now it's a symbol.
How many of the poor souls seized in Italy by the black regime; how many of those blindfolded youths would be ours-against the monster-in 24 hours of light, of freedom, of breathing without gags, of marching without a corporal, of movement without a black straitjacket.
Time is a great ally of evildoers, for man forgets his misdeeds more than his merits.
Time... Two years have passed; but the memory of young Fierro-of this hero of the spirit, who had broken with his own hands the moral chains instilled in him by the school of fascist Jesuitism-the memory of this generous victim, is not extinguished in free men.
Nor will it go out!
Oh! what a fine recruit he would have been for the Blackshirts, if the care of a loving father and mother had not saved him from this far darker and more sinister fate.
Fierro fell. But as a free man for freedom.
How many of his peers, who grew up with him in their adolescence, now go, like slaughtered fodder, to fatten up the African Andes!
In chronological remembrance, let us bow to the fallen.
On July 18, 1936, "L'Adunata dei Refrattari" remembered him by publishing a new photo of him on the front page.
"L'Adunata dei Refrattari" of July 8, 1939, also recalls that Antonio Fierro was murdered by Italian and American fascists: "He was the first victim of fascism in America. And the purest," and concludes: "No one will ever know how much the revolutionary movement lost with the loss of this serious, cultured, enthusiastic young man, a youth full of promise. Fascism crushed him without giving him time to blossom."
The Palermo trade unionist and poet Antonino Crivello dedicates to him the poem «To Antonio Fierro killed by fascist lead»:
Always your heart that you devoted to the noble
Ideal of justice and virtue
he was full of love for the oppressed and hatred
for the oppressors and for slavery[...]
When they wanted to impose on you in high school
to wear the black shirt, you
you preferred exile to the vile outrage[...]
When Italy will finally be redeemed
and the world will have only one homeland
we will return to your tomb to spread
the red flowers of Liberty.
A monument stands in his honor in Woodladawn Cemetery, and in the marble is engraved:
He made a shield of his chest
to the freedom offended by fascism
and fell
on July 14, 1933.
This name, this love
are sacred to the soldiers of freedom.
Even today, unknown hands place flowers and red carnations on Antonio Fierro's tomb.
Joseph Galzerano
Bibliography:
1200 at Fierro funeral Pledge war on fascism , «Daily Worker», central organ of Communist Party USA, New York, vol. X, n. 172, July 19, 1933, p. 1.
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Antonino Crivello, Antonio Fierro killed by fascist lead , sd
Nunzio Pernicone, Carlo Tresca. Portrait of a Rebel , Anicia, Rome, 2021, pp. 239-240.
Thirty Years of Anarchist Activity , L'Antistato Editions, Cesena, 1953, p. 168 - reprint Anonymous Comrades, 1914-1945 Thirty Years of Anarchist Activity , Samizdat Editions, Pescara, 2002, p. 198.
https://umanitanova.org/antonio-fierro-la-prima-vittima-del-fascismo-negli-stati-uniti/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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