Felix Frankfurter

Now that the type of memorial for President Franklin D. Roosevelt has become a matter of public discussion, his own wish regarding it ought to be made known. Reflecting on the matter in 1941. under stress of a family bereavement, he summoned an old friend, Mr. Justice Felix Frankfurter, and told him what he would prefer as a memorial, if one should be undertaken, and charged him to remember it “if the time should come.” The conversation was recorded by the Justice at the time. The documents published below were brought to the attention of President Roosevelt s successor promptly upon his accession to the presidency, and later, after Congress had established the Roosevelt National Memorial Committee, the documents were brought to the attention of that committee. In view of the course that events have taken, Mr. Justice Frankfurter feels that President Roosevelts wish ought to be publicly known, and he has therefore consented to the Atlantic’s publication of what follows. — THE EDITOR

In 1921, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, both Italian-Americans, were convicted of robbery and murder. Although the arguments brought against them were mostly disproven in court, the fact that the two men were known radicals (and that their trial took place during the height of the Red Scare) prejudiced the judge and jury against them. On April 9, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti's final appeal was rejected, and the two were sentenced to death. Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School, was considered to be the most prominent and respectable critic of the trial. He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939