Historical context

• Yet while The Crucible depicts one witch-hunt, it was written during another.
• The Crucible is a fictionalized account of the Salem Witch trials of 1692, in which 19 innocent men and women were killed by hanging and hundreds convicted before the panic subsided.
• In the 1950s, during the first years of the Cold War, a Senator named Joseph McCarthy rose to power by whipping the nation into a terror of Communists. 
• McCarthy led the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which sought to find Communists in America.
• Those named as Communists were placed on "Blacklists" that prevented them from getting work.
• Eventually the fervor died down and McCarthy was censured, but not before the lives of hundreds of people, particularly those in entertainment industries, were destroyed.