Mass Suicide at Jonestown
Mass Suicide at Jonestown
Two parrots sit on the fence of Jonestown, the ideological community of the Peoples Temple religious organization, where more than 900 members of this sect committed suicide, 1978.
The Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, originally Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church and commonly shortened to Peoples Temple, was an American new religious organization which existed between 1954 and 1978. Founded by Reverend Jim Jones in Indianapolis, Indiana, the Peoples Temple spread a message that combined elements of Christianity with communist and socialist ideology, with an emphasis on racial equality. After Jones moved the group to California in the 1960s and established several locations throughout the state, including its headquarters in San Francisco, the Temple forged ties with many left-wing political figures and claimed to have 20,000 members (though 3,000–5,000 is more likely).
The Temple is best known for the events of November 18, 1978, in Guyana, when 909 people died in a mass suicide and mass murder at its remote settlement, named "Jonestown", as well as the murders of U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan and members of his visiting delegation at the nearby Port Kaituma airstrip. The incident at Jonestown resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Because of the killings in Guyana, the Temple is regarded by scholars and by popular view as a destructive cult.
In 1974, the Peoples Temple signed a lease to rent land in Guyana. The community which was established on this piece of property was named the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, informally dubbed "Jonestown". The settlement had as few as fifty residents in early 1977.
Jones saw Jonestown as both a "socialist paradise" and a "sanctuary" from media scrutiny that had started with the Kinsolving articles. Former Temple member Tim Carter said the Temple moved to Jonestown because "in '74, what we saw in the United States was creeping fascism." Carter explained, "It was apparent that corporations, or the multinationals, were getting much larger, their influence was growing within the government, and the United States is a racist place." He said the Temple concluded that Guyana was "a place in a black country where our black members could live in peace", "it was a socialist government" and it was "the only English-speaking country in South America."
Increasing media scrutiny based on allegations by former members placed further pressure on Jones, especially after a 1977 article by Marshall Kilduff in New West magazine.[66] Just before publication of the New West piece, editor Rosalie Wright telephoned Jones to read him the article. Wright explained that she was only doing so before publication because of "all the support letters we received on your behalf, from the Governor of California [Jerry Brown]" and others.
While still on the phone listening to the allegations contained in the article, Jones wrote a note to Temple members in the room with him that said, "We leave tonight. Notify Georgetown (Guyana)." After Jones left for Guyana, he encouraged Temple members to follow him there. The population grew to over 900 people by late 1978. Those who moved there were promised a tropical paradise free from the supposed wickedness of the outside world.
On November 17, 1978, Representative Leo Ryan, who was investigating claims of abuse within the Temple, visited Jonestown. During his visit, a number of Temple members expressed a desire to leave with him, and, on November 18, some accompanied Ryan to the local airstrip at Port Kaituma.
There they were intercepted by self-styled Temple security guards who opened fire on the group, killing Ryan, three journalists, and one of the defectors as well as injuring nine others, including Ryan's aide, Jackie Speier. A few seconds of gunfire from the incident were captured on video by NBC cameraman Bob Brown, one of the journalists killed in the attack.
Though she was shot five times, including suffering a massive leg wound, Speier survived and won a seat in Congress in 2008, serving until she declined to run for reelection in 2022. That evening, in Jonestown, Jones ordered his congregation to drink a concoction of cyanide-laced, grape-flavored Flavor Aid In all, 918 people died, including 276 children.
This includes four that died at the Temple headquarters that night in the Guyanese capital of Georgetown. Some members resisted committing "revolutionary suicide," and were injected with fatal doses of cyanide, as were infants, and others survived by fleeing through the jungle. It was the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act until the events of September
The Temple's San Francisco headquarters was besieged by the national media and the relatives of the Jonestown victims. The mass killing became one of the best-known events in U.S. history as measured by the Gallup poll and appeared on the cover of several newspapers and magazines, including Time, for months afterward.
In addition, according to various press reports, after the Jonestown suicides, surviving Temple members in the U.S. announced their fears of being targeted by a "hit squad" which would be composed of Jonestown survivors. Similarly, in 1979, the Associated Press reported a U.S. Congressional aide's claim that there were "120 white, brainwashed assassins out from Jonestown awaiting the trigger word to pick up their hit."
Temple insider Michael Prokes, who had been ordered to deliver a suitcase which contained Temple funds which were supposed to be transferred to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, killed himself in March 1979, four months after the Jonestown incident. In the days leading up to his death, Prokes sent notes to several people, together with a thirty-page statement he had written about the Temple. Caen reprinted one copy in his Chronicle column. Prokes then arranged for a press conference in a Modesto, California motel room, during which he read a statement to the eight reporters who attended. He then excused himself, entered a restroom, and fatally shot himself in the head.
Before the tragedy, Temple member Paula Adams engaged in a romantic relationship with Guyana's Ambassador to the United States, Laurence "Bonny" Mann. Adams later married Mann. On October 24, 1983, Mann fatally shot both Adams and the couple's child, and then fatally shot himself. Defecting member Harold Cordell lost twenty family members on the evening of the poisonings. The Bogues family, which had also defected, lost its daughter Marilee (age 18), while defector Vernon Gosney lost his son Mark (age 5).
The mass suicide of the Peoples Temple has helped embed the idea that all new religious movements are destructive in the public's mind. Bryan R. Wilson argues against that point of view by pointing out that only four other such events have occurred within similar religious groups: the Branch Davidians, the Solar Temple, Aum Shinrikyo and Heaven's Gate.
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