Tituba: The Black Witch of Salem

Residing a stone's throw from Salem, Massachusetts, I am reminded of one of this nation's earliest examples of homegrown domestic terrorism - the Salem Witch Trails of 1692.
 
This haunting history of the Puritan's execution of innocent women, and certain men, is a window into how their religious fanaticism, misogyny, and homophobia destroyed not only the moral fiber of their town, but how it also decimated its own Christian zeal all to become a "city on the hill."

While new light is currently being shed on the Salem Witch Trials, little is still known about the first women accused of witchcraft that sparked the trials - Tituba, a black slave.

Born in Barbados, earlier white historians depict Tituba as Carib Indian. However, African American feminist historians depict Tituba as black. With Tituba married to a man named John Indian at the time the trans-Altantic slave trade was transporting Africans throughout and among the Caribbean islands, also known as the West Indies, Tituba's racial identity is only obscured to those who erase the history of slavery.
 
"There are those who dispute her African descent, countering that she was Indian, perhaps hoping to stir up enmity between black and Native American women as we seek to recreate our respective histories.... For, in the final analysis, Tituba's revenge consists in reminding us all that the doors of our suppressed cultural histories are still ajar," states African American lesbian feminist scholar and activist Angela Davis.

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