Jim Jones and the People's Temple

Some of the 913 dead bodies found in Jonestown, Guyana.

On 18 November 1978, 913 corpses were found in the jungle-secluded commune of Jonestown, Guyana. 276 were the bodies of children¹. The vast majority of the people, all members of a religious/cult movement known as The People's Temple, had died by willingly consuming cyanide-laced grape punch, making this the largest mass suicide in American history ².

Like most groups, The People’s Temple began with good intentions. James Warren Jones, known as Jim Jones, started the group initially as a small sect of Christianity that preached racial equality¹. Most joined the seemingly harmless movement because they disliked the judgments of traditional American society³. Jones, a former Methodist, originally preached social change and Christian beliefs. It wasn’t until later that he was recorded being worshipped as a father-figure god.

Jim Jones

Jones was born in Indiana in 1931, and at a surprisingly young age, he gained a reputation as a talented religious speaker. His first religious interest was in the Pentecostal church, but he also tried Methodism and frequently visited African American Baptist churches. In 1956, at only 25 years of age, Jim Jones began his own religious movement: The People’s Temple⁴.

The Temple society was meant to be a Marxist Utopia. It was not. Posthumous psychological evaluations found Jones to be highly insecure, and his hatred of criticism grew into a hysterical paranoia and obsessive need for control over people or what some psychologists describe as “mass hypnosis”.³ His suspicious distrust of United States officials grew so great that he moved his entire California congregation to the small South American country of Guyana in 1977. Most would expect few to follow, but in fact, over 1,000 did. They left behind their entire lives, including families, and did not say goodbye. ⁴

In the commune, Jones would conduct performances in which he publicly humiliated members of his congregation. “According to investigators, he would have certain members remove their clothes in front of the group and participate in bizarre boxing matches – often pitting an elderly person against a strong, young man”. Anyone who refused to participate or who broke any of the myriad Jonestown rules was beaten with a paddle. In order to seclude his disciples farther from reality, Jones would pump them full of various drugs, including Quaaludes, Valium, and Thorazine ³.

But these meetings and druggings were not enough. Jones needed to see that Temple members were willing to provide the ultimate sacrifice: their lives. Preoccupied with death, Jones would order what were called “white nights.” They were essentially suicide practices. Sirens were set off in the commune, and high-ranking members would go from cabin to cabin rousing other followers in the middle of the night, threatening the reluctant with rifles. One Temple member said:

We would be told that the jungle was swarming with mercenaries [who would torture us]…, that our situation had become hopeless and that the only course of action open to us was a mass suicide for the glory of socialism… Everyone, including the children, was told to line up. As we passed through the lines, we were given a small glass of red liquid to drink. We were told that liquid contained poison and that we would die within 45 minutes. We did as we were told.³

At one of the group meetings in 1978, Jones announced, “There is no way, no way we can survive… We are done in as far as any other alternative.” The small children were killed first⁴. One Temple leader inaccurately assured their parents: “They’re not crying from pain. It’s just a little bitter-tasting”⁵. In reality, death by cyanide is violent and painful: the throat closes as vital organs begin to shut down. In many cases, there is loss of vision, severe migraines, and extreme convulsions⁶.

While infants screamed in the background, Jones continued to preach into the last hours of his life. By the time United States officials arrived, the People’s Temple had murdered over 5 people (including a U.S. congressman) who had come to investigate them, Jim Jones had been shot in the head (whether by his own hand or someone else’s is not known), and 913 dead bodies were lying scattered on the South American soil. A handful of members had escaped into the jungle and survived, and some had not been at the commune that day. One of Jones's sons (pictured below) was off at a basketball game and thus survived.

Jones's son, Stephan, who was not at the commune the day of the suicides.

However, the severe brainwashing of the People’s Temple cult was not eradicated even after the suicides. One survivor said, “Had I been in Jonestown on November 18, 1978, I would have been the first in line to take the poison, had I been so honored” ³. Jones was a “master hypnotist” who controlled over 1,000 people by drugging them, weakening their families, and creating a no-escape society. He would frequently sleep with both men and women in the Jonestown community, and even forced one man, Larry Layton, to “submit to a homosexual act in the presence of a woman with whom Layton was involved.” Jones had no reaction to the man’s later mental deterioration, and this traumatizing event did not weaken anyone’s commitment. In fact, it was Larry Layton who was later charged with 5 murders that occurred in Guyana, including that of the U.S. Congressmen. Jones also told the black members of the congregation (who made up ¾ of it) that they would be captured and put in concentration camps if they left. White members were told “they were under CIA investigation and would be tracked down, tortured, imprisoned and killed if they did not go along with [Jones’s] dictates”³.

Jim Jones was able to create his warped paradise, at the expense of nearly 1,000 lives. The People’s Temple is one of the most notorious cults in the history of the world and serves as a warning sign for the negative effects of religious and/or political fervor. While such a community can provide support, guidance, and many other positive forms of help, as the People's Temple initially did, it can also deteriorate a person’s ability to be their own individual and cause them to actually believe someone like Jones who said on the last day of his life: “Without me, life has no meaning”⁵.

Works Cited and Recommended Further Information
(#5 is the actual recording of the last 45 minutes of Jonestown.)

• ¹ Encyclopaedia, Britannica. "Jones, Jim." Britannica Biographies (2010): 1. History Reference Center. v   EBSCO. Web. 21 Sept. 2010.
• ² Allis, Sam. "Jonestown Vividly Recalls Horror of Mass Suicide." The Boston Globe 9 Apr. 2007. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. 
• ³ Greenberg, Joel. "Jim Jones: The Deadly Hypnotist." Science News 116.22 (1979): 378. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. 21 Sept. 2010.
• ⁴ Petersen, Jennifer B. "Jim Jones." Jim Jones (2005): 1-2. History Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 21 Sept. 2010.
• ⁵ Internet Archive (FBI). The Jonestown Death Tape. Rec. 18 Nov. 1978. MP3. Web. < http://www.archive.org/details/ptc1978-11-18.flac16>
• ⁶ "Medicine: Death by Cyanide." TIME 28 Oct. 1946. Web.
• Metcalf, Bill. "Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, The Peoples Temple, and Jonestown." Utopian Studies 16.2 (2005): 335-338. World History Collection. EBSCO. Web. 21 Sept. 2010.
• Jonestown: Paradise Lost. History Channel, 2007. DVD.
• Reiterman, Tim, and John Jacobs. Raven: the Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2008. Print.