The History Of Peoples Temple In Guyana

It all began as a temple with messages about desegregation and promises about a utopia that would provide the best life imaginable. In the end, it was completely opposite of the failed promises. Members of the American cult followed their leader to their deaths. Jim Jones and his congregation worked to build Jonestown, which started out as an agricultural project in the dense South American jungle (“Peoples Temple in Guyana”). Thousands of Americans left their families and homes to worship Jones, who would end up being their worst nightmares. Peoples Temple began as a racially integrated temple, but ended being hell on Earth in the country of Guyana.

The photographs from November 18th, 1978, are haunting. Bodies were strewn about through the Jonestown compound in Guyana. Nearly one thousand Americans, mostly willingly, drank cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid at the summoning of their leader Jim Jones. Jonestown was established of followers of the cult Peoples Temple, which was a California-based cult. The Peoples Temple, formerly Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, was an American cult that originated in Indiana in the mid-1950s. Peoples Temple was founded and led by Reverend Jim Jones, whose goal was to create a racially-integrated utopian society where everyone was welcomed. To fund the early days of the Peoples Temple, Jones sold monkeys. “Jones had started off in the Midwest as the “monkey preacher”, selling imported monkeys door to door”. The Peoples Temple belief system consisted of a combination of Socialism, Communism, Utopianism, and Marxism. Jones moved his congregation to California to escape possible danger from nuclear attacks and to gather more followers. In the later years of the cult, Jones led his congregation to the South-American country of Guyana, where the operations would expand to a project known as the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, or notoriously, Jonestown. In 1978, more than nine-hundred members of the congregation met their untimely deaths at the hands of Jones. “Until the September 11th attacks, the tragedy in Jonestown on November 18th, 1978 represented the largest number of American civilian casualties in a single non-natural event”.

Peoples Temple began as a church congregation in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1955 by a charismatic man named Jim Jones. Jones had a vision of a racially-integrated congregation for Peoples Temple. When he was young, Jones idolized the ideals of people such as Adolf Hitler and Karl Marx, the later of which he would adopt some of his ideas from. Jones was exceptionally popular among his mostly African-American congregation. “He mixed social concerns with faith healing and an enthusiastic worship style drawn from the black church”. Some of Jones’s earliest followers were drawn to him through his powerful way of preaching and his messages involving race and war. Jones would also preach about injustices in American society to his congregation. “When he would talk about civil rights and the injustice that existed in American society… It was just one of those things you’d have to listen to”. During the 1960s, the Vietnam War was also going on. Jones was often heard preaching anti-war messages during services at Peoples Temple. These messages were appealing to those congregants who also shared the same views and thoughts on the subject as Jones.

In the mid-1960s, Jones began to obsess over the thoughts of a nuclear attack on the United States. So, in order to protect him and his congregants from danger, Jones moved Peoples Temple from Indianapolis to Ukiah, California. While in Ukiah, Jones and some of his followers volunteered in the community and helped the elderly. Jones encouraged his followers to become an active part of the community. “. . . members became active in both Protestant ecumenical circles and state politics”. After congregating in Ukiah for five years, Jones eventually moved the Peoples Temple to San Francisco in Northern California. “At the height of its popularity during the 1970s, the Temple had a membership estimated in the thousands and was courted by local politicians in San Francisco”. The times were not always bright and enjoyable at Peoples Temple. Former followers said that Jones became more agitated and irritable as time went on. Jones would beat congregants until they were bleeding and sometimes unconscious. “Punishment became a normal thing. . . His behavior became totally irrational”. Jones threatens the lives of those who attempted to defect from the church. The congregation would not remain a permanent fixture in California. Jones would eventually become paranoid due to people finding out about his abuse and irrational behaviors. Jones would begin looking for land for an “isolated utopia” to where he could lead his followers for a “better life”.

Jones found land in Guyana, a mostly english-speaking South American country for his project in 1974. The project, first named Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, would be the utopian society where everybody would fit in. There would be no segregation or daily issues of life in America. Nearly one-thousand of his followers would believe his promises and follow him to the compound known notoriously as Jonestown. “In early 1977 Jones came down to check the progress of the colony… that the whole congregation would soon be arriving and that once there they would not be permitted to depart”. When many of the followers arrived at Jonestown there was none of the pre-promised items. “Many followers said there wasn’t enough food or shelter to go around, and that Jones told them to turn over their money and passports upon arrival”. The South American heat and working conditions were not meant for many of the followers. When the followers would arrive, they claimed Jones would separate their families and try to destroy relationships. People living in the compound would work in the sweltering heat for several hours a day in the fields of crops. Jones would record his rants and replay them over loud speakers that could be heard all throughout the compound. After working in the equatorial heat, the followers would be fed dinner followed by an hours-long nightly service in the pavilion of the compound. Jones would rant until two or three in the morning, giving his followers only a few hours to sleep.

After arriving at Jonestown, some of the members wanted to leave the compound for the United States. They were being held against their wills by Jones, who had stripped them of their belongings and exhibited complete control over his congregation. When members began writing to their families back in America concern began to come about. Family members in the US began writing letters of concern to a California congressman named Leo Ryan. “In November 1978, Representative Leo Ryan had flown in with a group of journalists to see just what was going on in the jungle of Guyana, where constituents in Ryan’s home state of California feared their loved ones were trapped in an abusive cult”. Upon their arrival, the compound citizens acted as if it was an ordinary day. The delegation spent their time interviewing members, many of which had no desire to leave Jonestown. Later on in the evening, the delegation was entertained by dancing and music provided by members of the temple.

On November 18th, 1978, the investigation headed by Congressman Ryan seemed to be coming to an end. Congressman Ryan and his secretary Jackie Speier had multiple members ask for help escaping the compound. Sometime during the previous evening, one of the hopeful defectors slipped a note to one of the journalists pleading for help. When Jones was approached by the group he appeared agitated at the thought of members leaving the compound. Speier reportedly called for a back-up plane to help remove the defectors. Suddenly, someone lurched at Congressman Ryan and tried to kill him. The group and all of the defectors immediately loaded up and headed for the Port Kaituma airstrip. Many of the defectors were loaded onto the awaiting plane upon arriving at the airstrip. Ryan, Speier, the journalists, and remaining defectors waited on the airstrip for the second plane to arrive. As they were waiting, a tractor loaded with gunmen pulled up and opened fire on the group. Ryan, multiple journalists, members of the news crew, and defectors were killed in the ambush. The gunmen went around and shot the wounded point blank to ensure they were dead.

Back at Jonestown, Jim Jones was planning the final “white night” drill. The white night drills were random stagings Jones would call in the middle of the night to prepare the members for his planned “revolutionary suicide”. Jones would exclaim to the members over the multiple loud-speakers that all of their lives were in danger and they needed to arrive to the pavilion as soon as possible. Once they had all arrived, a liquid that Jones claimed to have laced with poison was distributed. The members were told to drink it and that they would be dead within the hour. Unbeknownst to them, there was no poison. Jones would praise them and tell them to go to bed. It was a test of Jones’ trust that they had repeatedly passed. After the airstrip massacre, it was finally time to perform the real suicide. Jones gathered his followers and told them the time had finally came. Nurses handed out syringes filled with potassium cyanide and instructed parents to administer it to their babies and to children too young to drink from a cup. People who refused to drink the poison were forcefully injected in their arms and backs. Hundreds of the remaining members drank grape Flavor-Aid laced with the potassium cyanide. Within hours, nearly one-thousand of the members were dead. “Jones was found dead by a gunshot to the head, surrounded by rows of bodies laid side-by-side, bloating in the sun”. It is unknown if Jim Jones took his own life or if another member of the congregation did. Other victims of the mass suicide included all of the Peoples Temple’s animals, a chimp and dogs, who were all shot to death.

Prior to the mass suicide, a group of separate defectors escaped into the dense South American jungle. Among them were a mother and her three year old child. Tim Carter, one of the survivors, was spared his life by running an errand for Jones. “. . . one of Jones’s top aides approached him and asked him to take some money to the Soviet Union’s embassy in Georgetown”. Jones believed the Russians would forgive him for the Port Kaituma Airstrip killings by giving them all the money at the compound. Some of the people who died at Jones’s command were not even at the compound. Multiple deaths occurred in the Guyanese capital of Georgetown. These deaths occurred by stabbing and slitting throats. Jones contacted the victims over a two-way radio and signaled them to take their lives and those with them. Jim Jones Jr and the members of Peoples Temple basketball team were also told to take their own lives. Jones Jr and the others refused, making them a few of the survivors that made it through the traumatizing event.

The aftermath of the massacre is forever remembered in the photos taken when the US Military entered the compound days after the suicides occurred. “Arrayed in strangely uniform rows on the ground, the bodies were rapidly decomposing, thanks to tropical heat, a rainstorm, and swarms of animals and insects”. The military now had the task of removing the bodies and preparing them to be flew back to the United States. “The last bodies to be removed had been in such a state of decomposition that bits and pieces kept falling off”. The bodies were placed in caskets and loaded up for a mass burial. Some of the bodies could not be recognized. The ones that were recognizable were able to be claimed by family members. Others were put into a mass grave marked with a memorial stone. Overall, nine-hundred-and-eighteen US citizens died in the tragedy.

Peoples Temple was an American cult that originated out of California in the 1950s. Led by a charismatic leader named Jim Jones, many people were attracted to his passionate messages and attitude. Jones was also thought of as a powerful preacher within the church. Jones led his group of followers to South America in the late 1970s, where most of them would meet their untimely and gruesome deaths.