The Salem Witch Trials

1. The Salem Witch Trials

2. Where it happened

3. The Cause • In January of 1692, a group of young girls in Salem Village, MA began to exhibit strange behaviors, such as blasphemous screaming, convulsive seizures, trance-like states and mysterious spells. • Physicians concluded that only the influence of Satan could be responsible for the girls’ afflictions. • Pressured to identify the source of their affliction, the girls named three women as witches: Tituba (the pastor’s Barbadian, or Bajan, slave), Sarah Good & Sarah Osborne.

4. Causes for the Girls’ Actions • Witchcraft • Jealousy • Repression • Hysteria • Guilt • Boredom • Egotism

5. How it Spread

6. The Effect • By the fall, over 140 people had been accused of practicing witchcraft in Salem, including a 4-year-old girl and a man in his 80s. • Twenty accused witches were executed: fifteen women and five men. • Nineteen were hanged following conviction, and one was pressed to death for refusing to enter a plea. • At least 4 - and as many as 13 -prisoners may have died in jail.

7. Procedure for Trials • The afflicted person makes a complaint to the Magistrate about a suspected witch.  The complaint is sometimes made through a third person. • The Magistrate issues a warrant for the arrest of the accused person. • The accused person is taken into custody and examined by two or more Magistrates.  If, after listening to testimony, the Magistrate believes that the accused person is probably guilty, the accused is sent to jail for possible reexamination and to await trial. • The case is presented to the Grand Jury.  Depositions relating to the guilt or innocence of the accused are entered into evidence. • If the accused is indicted by the Grand Jury, he or she is tried before the Court of Oyer and Terminer.  A jury, instructed by the Court, decides the defendant's guilt. • The convicted defendant receives his or her sentence from the Court.  In each case at Salem, the convicted defendant was sentenced to be hanged on a specified date. • The Sheriff and his deputies carry out the sentence of death on the specified date.

8. Salem Witch Trials Memorial

9. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible • Written more than 250 years after the Salem Witch Trials • Takes many dramatic liberties (it makes up some of the people, places, and events) • Allegory for America during the Red Scare of the 1950s and McCarthyism

10. The Red Scare • After WWII, many Americans feared the spread of communism through Europe and Asia • Americans began calling out public figures, entertainers, writers, and other citizens as communists • Any who spoke their mind or had a discerning viewpoint could be targeted

11. McCarthyism • McCarthyism: a term describing a period of intense anti-Communist suspicion in the United States that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the mid to late 1950s, also known as the Second Red Scare.

12. Joseph McCarthy • Wisconsin Senator who claimed "I have here in my hand a list of 205 people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party, and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.” • The list was never made public.

13. Causes of McCarthyism • The Beginning of the Cold War after WWII: • Increased fears of Communist influence on American institutions • Espionage by Soviet agents • Heightened tension from Soviet control of Eastern Europe • The Atomic bomb • The success of the Chinese Communist revolution (1949) • The Korean War (1950-1953)

14. Victims of McCarthyism • The number imprisoned was in the hundreds, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs. • In the film industry alone, over 300 actors, authors and directors were denied work in the U.S. through the informal Hollywood blacklist. • Blacklists were at work throughout the entertainment industry, in universities and schools at all levels, in the legal profession, and in many other fields.

15. McCarthyism and The Crucible • Several parallels exist between the House of Un-American Activities Committee’s rooting out of suspected communists during this time and the seventeenth-century witch-hunt that Miller depicts in The Crucible, including the narrow-mindedness, excessive zeal, and disregard for the individuals that characterize the government’s effort to stamp out a perceived social ill. • Further, as with the alleged witches of Salem, suspected Communists were encouraged to confess their crimes and to “name names,” identifying others sympathetic to their radical cause. • Some have criticized Miller for oversimplifying matters, in that while there were (as far as we know) no actual witches in Salem, there were certainly Communists in 1950s America. However, one can argue that Miller’s concern in The Crucible is not with whether the accused actually are witches, but rather with the unwillingness of the court officials to believe that they are not.

16. A ‘Crucible’ is… 1. A vessel made of a refractory substance such as graphite or porcelain, used for melting materials at high temperatures. 2. A severe test, as of patience or belief; a trial. 3. A place, time, or situation characterized by the convergence of powerful intellectual, social, economic, or political forces