Salem Witch Trials

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Late 1500-1600s A major witch scare spread
through Europe
Witch trials were one held in this Holland
church. Its now used as a restaurant.
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• 1628
• Puritans from England found Mass. Bay Colony -
  work, worship, fear - strict adherence to rules

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• What was a witch?
• deliberate formal compact with/Satan
• power to afflict others
• any distance or space

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• Memorable Providences
• written by Cotton Mather
• suspected witchcraft of an
• Irish woman in Boston

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• 1689 Rev. Sam Parris
• 1st pastor of church in Salem Village
• was first a merchant in West Indies
• John and Tituba Indian
• influence on children

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• Tituba became one of first women accused
• Tituba Teaching the First Act of Witchcraft 1892

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• I am Tituba the Witch 1880

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• Gov. of Mass. orders a new court
• chief Justice William Stoughton is an avid
  witch-hunter

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Gallows Hill
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The witch trials were halted in September of
1692.
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Cases of Conscience written by Increase Mather
(Cottons father) against spectral evidence
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The Crucible and McCarthyismThe Crucible is a
parable for the McCarthy Era. A parable is a
piece of literature intended to illustrate a
moral or religious lesson by paralleling current
events. During the McCarthy Era, citizens were
targeted as communists rather than disciples of
Satan.
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Hollywood, youre going DOWN!

• Blacklisting began in 1947, but grew like wild
  fire when Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy in
  Feb 1950 charged that 205 communists had
  infiltrated the state department. (Ended by
  1960).

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• The Blacklist was the mid-twentieth-century list
  of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians,
  and other U.S. entertainment professionals who
  were denied employment in the field because of
  their political beliefs or associations, real or
  suspected.
• Artists were barred from work on the basis of
  their alleged membership in or sympathy toward
  the American Communist Party, involvement in
  liberal or simply humanitarian political causes
  that enforcers of the blacklist associated with
  communism, and/or refusal to assist federal
  investigations into Communist Party activities
  some were blacklisted merely because their names
  came up at the wrong place and time.

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• The Hollywood blacklist is rooted in events of
  the 1930s and the early 1940s.
• During that era, long before the horrors of
  Soviet premier Joseph Stalins rule became common
  knowledge in the West, the American Communist
  Party attracted a large number of followers, many
  of them young idealists in the field of arts and
  entertainment.
• While the party lost substantial support in the
  U.S. in the late 1930s, the subsequent World War
  II alliance between the United States and the
  Soviet Union brought the party new credibility.
• During the war, membership in the American
  Communist Party reached a peak of 50,000.

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• Perceptions changed soon after the end of World
  War II, with communism increasingly becoming a
  focus of American fears and hatred.
• In October 1947, a number of people working in
  the Hollywood film industry (The Hollywood Ten)
  were summoned to appear before the HUAC which had
  declared its intention to investigate whether, as
  described by scholar Richard A. Schwartz,
  "Communist agents had succeeded in implanting
  Communist messages and values in Hollywood films."

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• HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee)
• investigated communism within Hollywood
• over 300 entertainers were placed on a blacklist
  and were forbidden to work for major Hollywood
  studios
• Arthur Miller was one who was blacklisted

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• Blacklisting caused direct damage to the careers
  of scores of American artists, and often made
  betrayal of friendship (not to mention principle)
  the price for a livelihood, and promoted
  ideological censorship across the entire industry.

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• As actor Larry Parks said when called before the
  panel (You dont need to write this down, just
  think about it!)
• Don't present me with the choice of either being
  in contempt of this committee and going to jail
  or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to
  be an informer. For what purpose? I don't think
  it is a choice at all. I don't think this is
  really sportsmanlike. I don't think this is
  American. I don't think this is American justice.

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• There was great pressure to avoid controversial
  subject matter in films or on TV, and the result
  was silly, light entertainment Ozzie and
  Harriet, Doris Day, Beach Blanket Bingo, I Love
  Lucy

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ALL OF THESE FOLKS WERE BLACKLISTED!
Charlie Chaplin
Paul Robeson
Leonard Bernstein West Side Story and Candide
Mike Douglass
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• Witch Trials McCarthyism
• 1. Fear of evil/Satan/unknown 1. Fear of
  communism
• 2. Small group of young girls 2. Joseph
  McCarthy
• Spectral evidence 3. Rumors associations
• Pressure from religious/court 4. Pressure from
  court/gov.
• officials
• 5. Fear of being targeted as a witch 5. Fear
  of being targeted as a comm.
• People with strong reputations 6. Solid people
  being
• being accused accused

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• Both
• 1. Founded on a fear deeply embedded in a
  culture
• 2. Ignited by an accuser
• 3. Accusations based on little/no/unreliable
  evidence
• Pressure and fear create a snowball effect
• Ended nearly as quickly as they began

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Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for Death of a
Salesman, Arthur Miller has come to be considered
one of the greatest dramatists in the history of
the American Theater. Miller created a large body
of theatrical work that is notable for its
examination of the often tortured nature of human
relationships, especially among family members,
for its preoccupation with the individual's
relationship to social forces, and for its
insistence on the need to live a life of moral
responsibility. Site includes a chronology,
newsletter and current events.
Thats Miller with Marilyn Monroe. They were
married at one time!