Jim Jones and Peoples Temple Part 1-Overview

It’s Saturday and as promised, this post will be on Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. This is the first post in a probably long series on the events leading up to and surrounding the mass suicides/killings at Jonestown, Guyana. There is a lot of  ground to cover and I’m going to do my best to cover most, if not all of it. I’ll be covering everything from Jim Jones and his family to the tapes found at Jonestown and everything in between. The fictional cult I’m writing about is heavily based on the Temple.

On the morning of  November 19, 1978, the bodies of over 900 Americans were found scattered all over a small commune in northwestern Guyana, South America by the Guyana Defense Force. It was clear that Jim Jones and his followers had committed what he had called “revolutionary suicide” the night before in the single greatest loss of  civilian life in American history, bested only by the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Among the dead were over 250 children. How could something that started out with such good intentions, end so badly?

Jim Jones founded the Community Unity Church in 1954, in part because the church he had initially presided over, refused to integrate African-Americans into the congregation. Two years later, calling themselves the Peoples Temple, Jones and his followers were able to acquire a building in a racially mixed area of Indianapolis where he would perform faith healings to generate income for the church and help needy families in the area. These healings helped solidify the community’s faith in God and their faith in Jones.

Over the next several years, the Temple continued to help the poor by opening soup kitchens, offering rent assistance, job placement and free canned goods, clothing and coal. They even provided a home for the elderly. It was because of all these positive programs that Jones was appointed to the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission. This gave him the ability to bring his message to an even greater audience.

1959 marked the shift in Jones from religious community leader to religious cult leader. His sermons started to include fiery rhetoric with undertones of Communism and an “us vs them” attitude. He was becoming a master of equating the teachings of Marx with the teachings of Christ without alarming his congregation. Jones also started subtly introducing atheist ideas as well as the idea that he was some sort of Christ-like figure.

In 1965, he convinced around 140 of his followers that the end of the world was imminent and that they needed to move to California to set up a new, socialist Eden for the aftermath. They set up shop in the Redwood Valley and billed it as the “mother church” of a “statewide political movement”. By this time Jones was openly speaking on the virtues of socialism and that the God of the bible was no God at all. He also had no qualms in telling outsiders that he was an atheist.

Throughout the late 60s and early 70s Jones ordered his flock to travel around the country to spread his vision for religion and socialism on Greyhound-type busses and that’s exactly what they did. Americans, and even some politicians, ate it up. By 1973, the Peoples Temple were a million dollar a year corporation, with churches all over California.

A 1972 an exposé started by the San Fransisco Examiner and the Indianapolis Star threatened to expose the church for what it really was. This infuriated Jones and threatened to sue the newspapers if they ran anymore of their 7 part series on the group. They had only reached the fourth installment by this point. This event, as well as some others, put the Temple under some serious media scrutiny which led to the church’s exodus into Guyana.

Only 50 members were living at the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, informally called Jonestown, in the early part of 1977, but many other members followed after some encouragement from their leader. By late 1978, the commune’s population had risen to almost 1,000 and the stage was set for what was to come.

On November 17, 1978 San Fransisco Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown to investigate reports of mistreatment of the churches member at home and abroad. He evidently liked what he saw and even gave a speech later that day telling the people so and praised them for being so successful. The next day, however, several members approached Ryan and expressed their wish to leave. This agitated the already paranoid Jones, who ordered the deaths of Ryan, his entourage and the defectors. They were ambushed at a nearby air strip by armed guards from Jonestown’s security detail and left for dead.

When the guards returned, Jones announced that Congressman Ryan was dead and ordered everyone in the commune to give cyanide laced Favor Aid to their children before ingesting the poisonous concoction themselves. If they didn’t kill themselves, he argued, the government would  “parachute in here on us,” “shoot some of our innocent babies” and “they’ll torture our children, they’ll torture some of our people here, they’ll torture our seniors” because of what happened to the Congressman. Leo Ryan is the only Congressman in US history to have died in the line of duty.

Jim Jones was found the next day laying next to his wooden “throne” on the community pavilion with a bullet in his skull as the bodies of his followers lay dead all around him. It was later confirmed Jones had long suffered from an addiction to barbiturates, as well as LSD and marijuana, which probably accounted for his increasing paranoia and erratic behavior.

Of all the people who followed Jim Jones to Guyana, 87 of them were able to escape death. Most of them live in anonymity now, but some, such as Tim Carter and Stephan Jones, Jim’s son, continue to speak out about what happened to them and have helped researchers by providing huge insight into the how and why of this tragedy.

If you’d like to  know more, here is a small list of resources that may help:

• The website Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple is probably the largest collection of information on the net concerning Jonestown. There are articles by Tim Carter and Stephan Jones hosted there in addition to articles written by other survivors and many others.
• Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People is one of the most definitive books on Jonestown.
• The documentaries Jonestown – The Life & Death of Peoples Temple and Jonestown: Paradise Lost are two of the best I’ve ever seen.

A quick search on Google and/or Amazon.com will result in literally hundreds, if not thousands, of other resources devoted to what happened that White Night in the jungles of Guyana. Come back next week when I’ll start writing on Jones’ early life and what brought him to God so to speak. And don’t forget about Tuesday, where I’ll be posting on the craft of writing.