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THE PEOPLES TEMPLE

The Jonestown Massacre

On 18 November 1978 James Warren ("Jim") Jones, founder and head of the Peoples Temple, ordered the assassination of California congressman Leo Ryan and the mass suicide of nearly a thousand of his followers in the colony he had established in the jungles of Guyana, the Promised Land. Jones himself died in the catastrophe. The events in Jonestown, as reporters called the enclave, stunned the world and deepened the fear of cults that was already rampant in the United States.

Beginnings

Jim Jones was born in Indiana in 1931. He went into the Pentecostal ministry as a youth, establishing a congregation in Indianapolis that took the name Peoples Temple in 1955. In time Jones affiliated both himself and his congregation with the Mainline denomination the Disciples of Christ. From the beginning Jones maintained a biracial congregation.

Apocalyptic Visions

In the early 1960s Jones became increasingly concerned about the nuclear threat and left Indianapolis for about two years, visiting Hawaii, Guyana, and finally Brazil before he returned to his congregation in Indiana and began to shift his beliefs from his original Christian base. In 1965 he sent the first of his followers to Mendocino County in northern California, incorporating the Peoples Temple there in 1966. He listed eighty-six followers at that time. When Jones moved himself and his family to the city of Ukiah, on the Russian River, the Peoples Temple began to expand. He opened branches in San Francisco and Los Angeles and converted middle-class whites, as well as elderly black followers.

San Francisco

In 1970 he opened his temple on Geary Street in San Francisco and concentrated his efforts there. In California Jones presented his ministry as a part of the Christian spectrum, only revealing his increasingly radical political and religious tenets to those he fully trusted. From the beginning of his California enterprise, Jones recognized the political influence he and his loyal followers could wield. Through volunteer work, clever public relations, and effective voting, the Peoples Temple became a force, first in the Republican Party in Mendocino County and then in Democratic politics in San Francisco. Jones and his lieutenants also organized his followers for fund-raising, for health care of the elderly, and other enterprises. Jones left millions of dollars after his death, and critics debate over whether he exploited his followers financially.

Jones's Popularity

By 1976 Jones was well known in San Francisco. Many admired his opposition to racism and his left-wing political views. He helped organize Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign in 1976 and was appointed to the city's Public Housing Authority. The following year he was invited to sit at the head table at the annual banquet of Religion in American Life.

Darker Shadows

Jones was expanding his darker side during this time, however. His political and social ideas were becoming increasingly radical as he moved to "apostolic socialism" and identified himself to his followers as a Communist. He left Christian tenets to tell his followers he was God. He also began to toy with the idea of a mass suicide of his followers—what he called "revolutionary suicide," death as a demonstration of radical will. He had also decided to move his flock to the South American nation of Guyana, where the Socialist politics and isolation were comfortable to him. In 1976 he leased the land he had chosen there for his colony, the Promised Land, and sent an early group of his followers to prepare for Jones and the others.

Defectors

By 1976 there were several defectors from the Peoples Temple, including Grace Stoen, whose husband had signed a document in 1972 saying that Jones was the father of Grace's child. While Tim Stoen was still working for Jones, Grace began to demand access to her child. In 1976 the boy was taken to Guyana, and Jones himself soon followed.

New West Exposé

Jones's publicity and flamboyant actions aroused curiosity as rumors circulated around San Francisco about the minister, the Peoples Temple, and its members. In 1977 New West, a magazine recently purchased by Rupert Murdock, scheduled a story about Jones based on material from former followers. Jones's loyalists generated publicity for the story when they first attempted to block the exposé and then tried to discredit the information it contained, but Jones was already in his refuge in Guyana by the time the story broke.

Concern over Guyana

The stories about the Peoples Temple, along with reports of strange actions by other groups labeled cults, led families of members of the temple to organize a Concerned Parents group to try to retrieve their relatives from Guyana. Jones's alleged son John Victor Stoen was one of the chief targets; Tim Stoen left the cult and joined the boy's mother in pressing for his return.

Government Investigation

The federal government was increasingly concerned with the actions of the Peoples Temple in Guyana as stories of gunrunning to Jonestown and unexplained bank transactions circulated. Jones by this time was ill, addicted to drugs, and possibly demented. He still ruled his colony, however, and in 1978 he began to excite his followers so isolated from the rest of the world with stories of impending disaster. He began to call for "white nights," during which the inhabitants of the Promised Land would practice suicide.

Death of Ryan

In November 1978 Congressman Leo Ryan of California came to Guyana to see for himself the conditions of Jonestown. When the congressman left, he took with him others who wanted to leave the colony. His plane was attacked, and Ryan and others were killed. Back at Jonestown Jones carried out the final performance of his "white nights," revolutionary suicide. When investigators arrived at the colony, they found the bodies of Jones and 913 of his followers, people who had swallowed Kool-Aid laced with cyanide or who had been shot by Jones's loyalists.