Never too late to exonerate the Salem witches

The Salem Witch Trials are certainly one of the more ignoble chapters in American history. Mass hysteria is never a good thing. In Massachusetts, more than 200 people were charged. They were mainly women and teenage girls, often indigent. Dorothy Good, a child of four, was among the ranks of those accused and jailed.

Of those charged, 31 were convicted. Many of them were executed by hanging. (Dorothy's mother, Sarah, was among those hanged. The child was "chained in a dungeon" for over seven months. When she was released, her father reported that his child had been driven insane. No surprise there.)

Over the (recent) years, those who were convicted have been exonerated.  But now:

More than 300 years [after the Salem witch hysteria], a group of advocates is pressing for recognition of victims like Dorothy, who have been left out of previous efforts to clear the names of those convicted or executed during the witch hunt hysteria of the Puritan era. Pardons and exonerations have largely focused on those executed in Salem, which leaves nearly 200 others unaccounted for, including those who were accused, imprisoned, indicted or lived elsewhere in the commonwealth. (Source: Washington Post)

The quest for exonerations is the work of the Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project. Their mission:

By clearing the names of the past victims, we honor the dead, educate the living, reduce the potential for future witch-hunts of all kinds, and send a message that we stand opposed to violence against persons accused of witchcraft. Exoneration is a way to show our respect to generations gone before us and provide comfort to the victims’ descendants. This is also an opportunity to learn many lessons applicable today. Through sharing the history of past witch-hunts, we learn how to identify and stop similarly oppressive actions in the present.

(For the record: I signed the petition and chipped in $25 to support their cause.) 

The witch-hunt justice proponents note that while actual witch-hunts and executions may be a thing of the past in America and Europe, they still take place elsewhere in the world. Not that we're exempt from mass hysteria. In the 1980's, there was the daycare panic, in which a number of daycare workers were wrongly accused of and imprisoned for molesting children. And then there's QAnon revving up satanic panic. Just before QAnon darkened our doors with their crazypants (and ultra-dangerous) nonsense, there was Pizzagate. Remember that one? Democrats were supposedly trafficking children out of a DC pizza parlor. One crackpot showed up with a gun to save the children...

There's also plenty of scapegoating going around: immigrants, members of the LGBTQ+ community, Muslims, et al. We're a nation on edge, made all the edgier because in the US, guns outnumber people.

But back to the exoneration: I'm all for it. It may mean something to the descendants of those accused over 300 years ago; it may make us think about present day parallels.

Too late is better than never at all.