Salem’s last witch was officially pardoned more than three centuries following her death sentence thanks to the work of a class at a Massachusetts State College.
A favorable context for false accusations
About twenty people (fourteen women and six men) lost their lives between February 1692 and May 1693 in several Massachusetts villages near Salem (now Danvers), in the Thirteen Colonies. No less than a hundred people were also arrested during this series of witchcraft trials very famous in North America.
As explained The Guardian in an article of May 27, 2022, a real judicial frenzy had then taken place once morest a background of superstition, puritanism and misogyny. Still fragile, the British colony on the American continent faced the circulation of several diseases, social inequalities and the risk of attacks from the natives. In this context, the inhabitants wanted to appoint scapegoats.
22 years old at the time, Elizabeth Johnson Jr. was among the sentenced to death by hanging. However, Massachusetts Royal Governor William Phips ended the trials and allowed those imprisoned, including young Elizabeth, to be freed. If she escaped death, her official pardon will have taken 329 years to occur.
Finally uncovering the truth
As the British daily indicates, Massachusetts lawmakers have pardoned the last witch of Salem on May 26, 2022 thanks to a ninth grade class at North Andover Middle School who started a lawsuit in 2021. According to Carrie LaPierre, a civics teacher who accompanied the students, they drafted a bill, wrote letters to the legislators and have do all the research themselves. They also made presentations and reviewed the testimony of Elizabeth Johnson Jr.
Methuen Democratic Senator Diana DiZoglio received the students and reviewed the bill to exonerate the young woman wrongly accused at the time of witchcraft. She then claimed that it was impossible to change the horrors that the inhabitants of the time committed on the victims, but that it was at least possible to restore the truth.
Finally, you should know that in 1712, Elizabeth Johnson Jr. asked the Massachusetts court to admit one’s innocence. However, she did not win the case. Several defendants (very few) had therefore been cleared by means of subsequent legislative resolutions, but not the young woman.
