Question: The 1920's America was divided by two nations. One nation consisted mainly of native born white American protestants. The other nation consisted of an immigrant nation, comprised of Jews and Catholics, who flooded into the country from Italy, Russia, and the rest of Eastern Europe. In 1921 the death penalty of Sacco and Vanzetti provoked a bitter national an international controversy. This was not the first death penalty, why then all the fuss? The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti was representative of the tensions and conflicts between the two nations. Sacco and Vanzetti represented the immigrant nation who the native-born white Anglo-Saxon nation worried had threatened their beloved country. This led to the discrimination felt by southern and eastern Europeans by the native-born Americans. Sacco and Vanzetti represented one of the two nations. The Ku Klux Klan was the symbol of the other nation. Antisemitic and anti-Catholic prejudice swept the land. Sacco and Vanzetti deaths was a wakeup call for the nations to question if these actions embodied their principles of freedom and equality inherited in 1776.