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Compare the Salem Witch Trials to McCarthyism
Compare the Salem Witch Trials to McCarthyism
Comparing salem witch trials and mccarthyism
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Multiple killings of innocent, unarmed people seemed to spark the rise of social injustice of African Americans. Such as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner. The comparison of the Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism, social injustice against African Americans became greatly common in today's society. The unjust accusations of a specific group of people because of their race or beliefs influenced The Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism, and the killings of African Americans. These accusations didn’t just lead to killings but an uproar in the African American community.
Injustice against Africans has been going on for more than 20 years or longer; but as we continue to observe these killings on a daily it becomes just a “regular” thing
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Trayvon Martin's death was dreadful, Zimmerman’s poor judgment led to all of this. His judgment guided him to believe that Trayvon was suspicious looking; even though it wasn't his place to take action he did. The 17-year-old was seen walking down the street with a can of Arizona and a bag of Skittles, while on the phone with his friend; Zimmerman never noticed Mr. Martin in the neighborhood. "This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining, and he's just walking around" said Zimmerman (Botelho, CNN). Comparing the social injustice of African Americans to McCarthyism, it made its way into the Crucible by accusing young women of practicing witchcraft. A simple birthmark on her back would essentially put her in a position to be put to …show more content…
These killings that we’re experiencing are affecting more than just adults. What about the young 6-year-old girl who had to witness her father be shot an killed by a person who is supposed to protect and serve? Relating this back to McCarthyism and the Salem Witch trials, the deaths of mothers and fathers were devastating. These mothers were taken from their kid’s; eleven out of twenty of those accused and killed had children to care for. In the time of the Salem Witch Trials, females were the caregivers while the men were dominant and known as the “spiritual heads” of the
On August 28, 1955, fourteen year old Emmett Till was beaten, tortured and shot. Then with barbed wire wrapped around his neck and tied to a large fan, his body was discarded into the Tallahatchi River. What was young Emmett’s offense that brought on this heinous reaction of two grown white men? When he went into a store to buy some bubblegum he allegedly whistled at a white female store clerk, who happened to be the store owner’s wife. That is the story of the end of Emmett Till’s life. Lynchings, beatings and cross-burning had been happening in the United States for years. But it was not until this young boy suffered an appalling murder in Mississippi that the eyes of a nation were irrevocably opened to the ongoing horrors of racism in the South. It sparked the beginning of a flourish of both national and international media coverage of the Civil Rights violations in America.
Four black sharecroppers (Roger Malcom, Dorothy Malcom, George Dorsey and Mae Murray Dorsey) are brutally murdered by a group of white people. The murders attracted national attention, but the community was not willing to get involved. The community was not fazed by these brutal murders but, by the fact that this incident got national attention. They were even more astounded that the rest of the nation even cared. In this book Laura Wexler shows just how deep racism goes. After reading the book I discovered that Fire in a Canebrake has three major themes involving racism. The first is that racism obstructs progression. The second is history repeats itself. The last theme is that racism can obscure the truth. This lynching, in particular, marks a turning point in the history of race relations and the governments’ involvement in civil rights. In the end this case still remains unsolved. No concept of the
When in doubt of an idea that presents itself, you either have to pursue the superior opinion or compose it for yourself. You’re sitting in a court, bewildered at the fact that an innocent or guilty individual is accused of a substance so erroneous. The residual of the audience believes these unwarranted accusations, but they have no understanding of the material that is being forenamed. The only option left is to neglect your subjacent opinion and follow the superiority or seem like someone at fault . This is what occurred during both the Salem Witch Trials and the Red Scare which undoubtedly displayed hysteria of that clear-cut populace. Both these events sparked dread, repression, and hysteria throughout history and significantly affected their participators in these two completely contrasting time zones.
Throughout history , it has been shown that, history has a tendency to repeat itself. In 1692, men and women were accused of witchcraft whether they were guilty or not. The place that this was occurring was, Salem, Massachusetts, a city full of puritans who came from Europe. Witchcraft was the among the worst crime any individual could do. This often times led to people being hung or exiled from the church. Many people were hung, even though they were innocent. Many years later during the WWII era, there was a lot of speculation about communists and their impact in America This era was known as the McCarthyism era, because, Sen. McCarthy was the leading America into a anti -communist state. In one case in particular was of a U.S AIr Force Lieutenant, Milo Radulovich, who was released from the Air Force due to the fact that his father, read a newspaper which was from Serbia, because he has a Serbian background, the Air Force believed his was pro-communism, since the newspaper favored communism. The Air Force also believed Milo was pro-communism because, his sister peacefully protested outside of a hotel which didn’t allow a communist member to stay at . Milo was born and raised in Michigan, he also dedicatedly served his country, he had no form of favor in communism. but was automatically placed under the notion that he supported communism and was fighting for them because his dad read a newspaper from a different country and his sister protested for equal rights. Neither Milo or his family did anything bad. Assumption thinking leads to stereotypes.
Cotton Mather, in his The Wonders of the Invisible World, preserved for posterity a very dark period in Puritanical American society through his account of the Salem witch trials in 1692. His description is immediately recognizable as being of the same viewpoint as those who were swept up in the hysteria of the moment. Mather viewed Salem as a battleground between the devil and the Puritans. "The New Englanders are a people of God settled in those which were once the devil's territories. . . . The devil thus irritated, immediately tried all sorts of methods to overturn this poor plantation" (Mather 421). Here Mather is alluding to the Native Americans as being a people associated with the devil rather than with their God, a common point of view held towards all savage people. Mather saw the witches of Salem as being "his [the devil's] incarnate legions" sent to Salem "to persecute us. . ." (Mather 421). The Salem witch trials have become a part of American mythology which has been passed down to each succeeding generation for over 300 years after the village of Salem sent its last witch to the gallows. However, it is the witch trials relevance to modern society more than any other factor that has contributed to its legendary place in American history and mythology. The witch trials that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, are the precursor to the modern trials where adults are accused of crimes including ritualistic sexual molestation of children. These types of ritualized abuse are commonly linked to Satanic cults. Modern beliefs in Satanists mirror similar beliefs held of colonial witches.
The play described Betty as a young girl, nine years of age, who began showing symptoms around the same time as her cousin Abigail Williams. Betty accused many people, and testified against them in multiple court cases. From the evidence that the Witch Trials shows, Betty was most likely pretending to be possessed in order to gain attention, or rebel from the strict lifestyle the Puritans followed. “She could not concentrate at prayer time and barked like a dog when her father would rebuke her. She screamed wildly when she heard the ‘Our Father’ prayer and once hurled a Bible across the room” (Walsh).
The Salem Witch trial and the Holocaust were very similar event because the people in both of these event were oppressed and were treated under harsh conditions, but the people that were affected by the Salem Witch trials were in better conditions than the people living during the Holocaust and the concentration camps. During the Salem Witch trials, the people involved it were given proper living conditions, while in the Holocaust, they were unbearable for most people.
The Salem witch trials and the story of Joseph McCarthy are very similar; they both accused innocent people of doing things that were “bad” at the time. The Salem Witch trials were persecutions of men and woman on account of performing witchcraft. Two girls accused a woman of doing witchcraft and then the accusations continued, people accused other people to relieve their own punishment in a last ditch effort to save their lives, but it was in vein. After the witch trials were over “19 had been killed and an elderly man pressed to death under heavy stones”(Linder). “Some accused of witch craft were burned at the stake all in the name of justice”(Brown). Others were finally let out of jail after being in imprisonment for months at a time. Joseph McCarthy was the U.S senator for the state of Wyoming from 1947-1957, the year that he died. McCarthy became the most visible face in public during the time of the cold war in America. “McCarthy pursued unnecessary investigations, imprisonments and unprovoked acts to those who were being accused of being a communist”(Glitterrich). The term McC...
The population of African Americans from 1865 to 1900 had limited social freedom. Social limitations are limitations that relate “…to society and the way people interact with each other,” as defined by the lesson. One example of a social limitation African Americans experienced at the time is the white supremacy terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan or the KKK. The KKK started as a social club formed by former confederate soldiers, which rapidly became a domestic terrorist organization. The KKK members were white supremacists who’s objective was to ward off African Americans from using their new political power. In an attempts to achieve their objective, Klansmen would burn African American schools, scare and threaten voters, destroy the homes of African Americans and also the homes of whites who supported African American rights. The greatest terror the KKK imposed was that of lynching. Lynching may be defined via the lesson as, “…public hanging for an alleged offense without benefit of trial.” As one can imagine these tactics struck fear into African Americans and the KKK was achiev...
Salem Witch Craft In 1962 the penalty for witchcraft was to be hung or smashed. There was a big outburst of witchcraft and spells that were going around among the people of Massachusetts in 1962. Some of the women of Salem began the witchcraft, many people started to catch on and follow them. A lot of these people were hung up to what the Bible said about the wrongs of witchcraft.
During the time of the Salem Witch Trials the intertwining of religion and government did not allow citizens of Salem, Massachusetts the right to a fair trial, so it was the states responsibility to separate the two. In the 1600’s the Puritan religion was greatly enforced by the government. It wouldn’t be until many years later that separation of church and state became a law.
In a setting of purity and orthodox, the usage of black and white thinking in the village of Salem had devastating effects. After the creation a brand new society, optimism for a bright future was high. Because of this optimism, the usage of black and white thinking made any anomalies critical in the colonists’ society. The townspeople enacted blind accusations and incriminating false charges based on suspicion which arose from the usage of black and white thinking. From the colony’s staunchly religious setting, black and white thinking became a major cause of the turmoil, suspicion and hysteria that rapidly spread throughout the town. This type of either-or fallacy, like those from the McCarthy Era, turned average citizens into fearful and suspicious vigilantes against unorthodox.
Events have played out in history that made people realize the inhumane acts of people and the Salem witch trials and the McCarthy era were two of them. The Salem witch trials in 1692 were almost 260 years before the McCarthy “witch hunts” in the 1950s yet there are similarities between them. The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller in 1953, is about the Salem witch trials and is an allegory to the practicing of McCarthyism during the Second Red Scare in the United States, which Miller was a victim of. Although there may be differences between “The Crucible” and McCarthyism, ultimately the anger, lack of evidence, and the people were alike in both events.
From the summer of 1979 to the summer of 1981, at least twenty-eight people were abducted and killed during a murder spree in Atlanta, Georgia; these killings would come to be known as the Atlanta Child Murders. While the victims of the killings were people of all races and genders, most of the victims of the Atlanta Child Murders were young African-American males. These murders created great racial tension in the city of Atlanta, with its black population believing the murders to be the work of a white supremacist group. (Bardsley & Bell, n.d., p. l) However, when police finally apprehended a suspect in the case, they found it was neither a white supremacy group, nor a white person at all; it was a 23 year-old African-American man named Wayne Williams. (“What are”, n.d.)
There are some events in history that put the human race to shame; however, these occasions can change our future forever. Society cannot deny that social injustices occur almost every day, maybe even more than once. One large blemish in our history, the Salem Witch Trials, alienated a certain group in our society. These trials were an unfortunate combination of economic conditions, a flock’s strife, teenage boredom, and personal jealousies.