An interview with Professor Emerson W. Baker, part 1
Every year, more half a million high school students participate in the National History Day contest. In 2019, the theme was Triumph & Tragedy in History. Besides a multimedia website based on witch hunts, Kayleigh interviewed Emerson (“Tad”) Baker, historian and professor at Salem State University. Professor Baker is the author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (2014), The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New England (2007), and The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651-1695 (1998). He also was a member of the Gallows Hill Project Team that verified the 1692 site where 19 people were hanged during the Salem witch trials.
Kayleigh: My project is following the history of witchcraft and showing this year’s theme of triumph and tragedy, of how the horrible deaths and torture that the accused went through caused people to change how they think about the government and how they treat trials. I know that in your book, A Storm of Witchcraft, you talk about the current significance of the trials. I was wondering how you think Salem has become a place where modern-day witches want to live when in history witches had been hunted and killed there.
Dr. Baker: Well, as I like to say, Gallows Hill has cast a large and dark shadow on Salem since 1692. And I really think that has been a point of shame and humiliation and reflection on people in Salem ever since. Note that it took until the 300th anniversary for the city to even build a memorial to acknowledge that. And that there were, as I talk about in the book, efforts before that. They tried at the 200th anniversary and there just didn’t seem to be the will in the community to face it. There really was an effort I think to really try to forget—collective amnesia.
Look at the whole side of the executions where people knew, well into the 18th century, the Proctor family owned the land, surely they knew where the executions took place, and yet somehow by the 19th century the community somehow managed to collectively “forget.” [If you were sitting here with me, you’d see I was putting quotes around the word “forget.”] And so it was a long sort of sore spot for the community, and as I point out in the book, Salem really was publicly ridiculed for it as early as 1697 in the first book where they do that.
So, back to your question: How does that get Salem to be a welcoming place? It is interesting. I was on a panel discussion about this subject a few years ago. Essentially, you hear about some of the people who come to Salem, for example, a fellow who had several murder sentences overturned—a very famous case—he was released from prison after a wrongful conviction after he served many years in jail. He and his wife moved to Salem. When asked why, his response was that the people in Salem understand how dangerous, how damaging it is to pre-judge people, to rush to judgment. He said it’s sort of like letting people be and prove themselves on their merits. In essence, they felt that Salem was a very welcoming place, that no one was making any assumptions about them or their past. They said that Salem had made that mistake before and the people here now wanted to be a more open and welcoming community, where people, regardless of who they are—their background, their faith, anything—that they would be welcome in Salem.
I get that sense here in the people of Salem overall that people want to try to make amends. The one way that you can do that is to be an open and caring community where everyone—immigrants from all over the world, people of whatever faith—can be comfortable and feel at home in Salem.