from his followers. This opened Jim Jones’s eyes to what he himself may be able to achieve. He decided to put his own following to the test.
Over the course of a couple of weeks, Jones reported to the people of his church how the violence generated against him by the racists of the community and in particular, the Ku Klux Klan, was on the increase. He told them he had been attacked, his property had been vandalised, and his family were receiving threats. The stories appeared in the local press, leaked to them by Jones himself. Consequently, Jones was offered a job, fully paid, on the Human Rights Commission of Indianapolis and he received full support and backing by his followers in this role. Encouraged by the strength of this allegiance, not only of his own congregation but also of the mayor in offering him this role, Jones’s confidence grew. He soon seized what he thought would be an opportunity to test this commitment to the extreme.
JONES DISCOVERS GUYANA
America was in the throes of preparing herself for the threat of nuclear war, and millions of families were building themselves fall-out shelters. In a spoof article, a magazine responded to this nationwide panic by listing the top ten safest places in the world to be to maximise chances of survival in a nuclear war. Jones read the article in all seriousness, and his eyes fell upon Belo Horizonte in Brazil. He spoke to his congregation, telling them that he predicted wholesale nuclear destruction, but that he could lead them to a place where they would be safe. He went out ahead to explore the area, funding the trip entirely from the finances of the church. He did not like what he found though, and deemed the area unsuitable as a place to begin a new life and base his community. However, on the return journey he did stop over in Guyana for a couple of days.
To Jim Jones, Guyana was a much more viable option. A newly independent socialist democracy, it was the perfect place to live out his harmonious and socially equal ideal.
In view of this new and exciting discovery, Jim Jones returned home to an eagerly-awaiting congregation and told them that in fact, the threat of nuclear war had lessened and that consequently there was no immediate rush to move out to Brazil as he had originally planned.
Jim Jones continued his activities in The People’s Temple, embarking upon faith-healing to attract more followers to his church. News of his healing powers spread, and worshippers at the church witnessed those who claimed to have previously been sick and crippled, leap up in the middle of his sermons professing themselves to be cured of their illness or disability. No doubt these ‘miracles’ had been fixed in advance by Jim Jones, but they had the desired effect and more people came.
A CLAIM TOO FAR
But things got out of hand. Perhaps encouraged by Jones, the followers at The People’s Temple began to make claims that not only was their reverend curing the sick, but that he had actually brought no less than 40 of the faithful back from the dead. This attracted the unwanted attentions of the State Board of Psychology. Sensing the urgency and possible danger of this situation, Jim Jones gathered his followers together and fled for the Redwood Valley near Ukiah, California. It was a wise decision. As it was the mid-’60s and a haven for hippies and drop-outs, Jim Jones and The People’s Temple slipped in unnoticed and were left entirely to their own affairs.
CHARITY WORK
Wisened by the brush he had with the authorities and the negative reports he had been subjected to in the media however, Jim Jones decided to safeguard himself against the possibility of such damaging press occurring again. He ingratiated himself with the local community by telling his congregation to take unpaid charity work, and to offer their homes up to foster children. Jones himself turned his attention to influential politicians and before long had been proclaimed foreman of the County Grand Jury. His only aim in acquiring this political power, he declared, was to use it to enforce greater social equality. In order to help him, citizens were asked to make donations to The People’s Temple, which consequently became a state-registered, tax-exempt religious body.
As Jones’s finances grew, he was able to establish a new church in San Francisco for his now 7,500-strong congregation. He never failed to impress as officials and the press watched on to see him distributing food and care for the poor and disadvantaged on a daily basis.
As more and more people handed over their income and life savings to The People’s Temple, not only did Jones’s finances grow, but his name spread far and wide too. His attentions now turned to South America, and to the starving children he believed he could ‘help’ out there. In particular, he wanted to spread his aid to Guyana. He was supported in this endeavour not only by his own followers, but now by the politicians and civic leaders who looked to this exemplary missionary and praised his ceaseless fight for the poor and underprivileged of the world.
THE ROAD TO ‘JONESTOWN’
Perhaps carried away by his own phenomenal success however, Jim Jones began to get more and more extreme and puritanical in his views and preachings. He gave lengthy sermons about the evils of sex, and was beginning to encourage some of the married couples in the church to divorce so that he could choose more suitable partners for them from the Temple. As leader, he claimed he had the right to have sex with any of the female members he chose and forced them into many sexual acts against their will. He abused them sexually, and enjoyed watching them suffer physical abuse too. He would arrange fights, partnering children against adults to see the young ones knocked out. Some kids were tortured with cattle prods.
Yet he was still the golden boy in the eyes of the press. He kept the journalists away from some of the more sinister goings-on in the Temple by diverting their attention with the Temple Awards, huge financial rewards for reporters who had made ‘outstanding journalistic contributions to peace and public enlightenment’. The police department was also on his side, as grateful as they were for the charitable contributions he was making to the families of police officers who had lost their husbands, sons and fathers in the line of duty.
The bubble was about to burst though. News of Jim Jones’s remarkable, altruistic mission was spreading far and wide and it came to the attention of the White House that perhaps a little more unbiased investigation should be done into the activities of The People’s Temple. Knowing what probing any deeper than the superficial exterior of his mission would uncover, Jim Jones knew the time had come. The money he had been so generously sending to Guyana had in fact been used to procure a plot of land in the Guyanese Jungle, soon to be known as ‘Jonestown’. Accommodation had also been built, with space enough for Jim Jones to bring 1,000 followers. Here they would set up and live out Jim Jones’s utopia.
In November 1977, Jim Jones and 1,000 of his faithful followers left for Guyana, and behind them San Francisco breathed a sigh of relief that the problem of The People’s Temple was no longer its own. All of San Francisco that was, except for one man – Leo Ryan.
LEO RYAN
Ryan was a local politician, and rather than waving Jones off, pleased to see the back of him, his concerns grew for the 1,000 citizens he had taken with him. He had already heard disturbing reports from the relatives of suicide victims who had belonged to, and attempted to leave, The People’s Temple while in San Francisco. Already, news was reaching him from the friends and family of those who had left for Guyana, that they were being held against their will, and that they were prisoners in Jonestown.
Ryan decided that he had to get out there, to see for himself the conditions in which these people were being held, and if indeed, they were being held against their will at all. He arranged the trip with the agreement of State Department officials, and also sent a telegram to Jim Jones to announce his forthcoming visit. Jones imposed some conditions on the visit, banning media coverage and insisting that the Temple’s legal counsel be present in all discussions.
When the time for the trip eventually came, Leo Ryan landed in Guyana to find that Jim Jones had retracted his permission to allow him to visit, and he was barred from even getting out of the plane. Lengthy negotiations ensued, and eventually Ryan was allowed access to Jonestown. What he found there confirmed his fears, and disturbed him greatly. The members, although professing complete devotion to their saviour Jim Jones, were indeed trapped – Jones had taken their passports from them. What’s more, they were in a poor physical state, weak and undernourished. Ryan addressed the group, telling them that any one of them was at complete liberty to leave with him, and that he guaranteed them total protection should they decide to do so. Out of the silent and slightly shocked group, one person stepped forward.
Ryan stayed on in Jonestown to talk further with the members of The People’s Temple. The journalists he had travelled out with, left to stay the night in a neighbouring town. When they were safely out of Jonestown, one of the journalists read a note which had been secretly passed to him by one of Jones’s followers. ‘Please, please get us out of here,’ it said, ‘before Jones kills us.’ Four people had signed the piece of paper. The second journalist
