Maryland Is Working to Exonerate Its Witches Hundreds of Years Later

You may not have noticed amidst the wide variety of anti-social justice horrors taking place at the moment but there has been a global movement to exonerate women who, several centuries ago, were accused of witchcraft — women who either had their reputations destroyed over it or had their lives taken because of it.

In 2022, Massachusetts cleared the name of Elizabeth Johnson Jr., a woman who was accused of witchcraft during the infamous Salem Witch Trials. Nearby, Connecticut had its own reckoning with its anti-witch past when, in 2023, lawmakers voted to exonerate 12 people over 370 years after they were convicted of witchcraft.

While Scotland didn’t legally exonerate those it accused of being witches between the 16^th and 18^th centuries, it did issue an official apology in 2022, a pretty big deal for a nation that didn’t even want to acknowledge its grave and grisly injustices before that.

Delegate Heather A. Bagnall is trying to do the same for those accused of being witches in the state of Maryland. She has recently introduced a resolution in the general assembly that will exonerate seven women who were tried and convicted of witchcraft in the state of Maryland between the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

One of those women, Rebecca Fowler, was hanged after her conviction in 1685.

Bagnall is motivated by modern-day anti-transgender and anti-abortion conservative crusades that, like the witch trials of the past, represent vast scapegoating measures that target women on the margins of society, outsiders who defied societal norms.

She’s doing it at the perfect time too, as witchcraft, both as a spiritual practice and an aesthetic, is having a moment in the sun. There’s a feeling lingering in the air. People are pulling back from a digital, highly corporatized world and vibing with the lingo, aesthetics, and perspectives offered by a historically maligned subculture that is more attuned to the vibes of the natural world.

The women Bagnall is trying to exonerate will never hear that justice has been served. But it isn’t necessarily about them. It’s about us, collectively, as a nation, and in this case as a state, coming together to acknowledge the sins of the past to correct them as best we can today.