The horrifying story of the Salem Witch Trials finally came to an end on Tuesday May 26, 2022, when the senate of the state of Massachusetts voted to pardon Elizabeth Johnson, Jr. who had been sentenced to death for the crime of witchcraft during the witch hunts of the seventeenth century. Elizabeth was the only one remaining of the accused to not have been previously pardoned. This pardon was 329 years in the making and was a result of an eighth-grade class at North Andover that took up the cause, wrote a bill, and presented it to legislators.
It’s important to note that it’s likely that none of the accused were witches but were caught up in the hysteria of an age. Their cause should be important to all of us because it could have been any one of us in their stead. A pardon always matters.
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