The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

by Jeff Guinn

In the 1930s, the Movement acquired extensive farmland in Ulster County, New York, and named it Promised Land. Most produce grown there fed those living in Peace Mission communes—Father Divine meant for his people to be self-sufficient.

In the early fall of 1961, he was rushed to an Indianapolis hospital with severe abdominal discomfort. Jones was assigned a room in the hospital wing reserved for whites and insisted he would stay only if there was immediate integration. Things were further complicated with the arrival of Jones’s personal physician, who was black. Administrators were aware of Jones’s reputation as director of the city Human Relations Commission. They promised to open building wings to all races. That wasn’t enough for Jones. In terrible pain—he would be diagnosed with bleeding ulcers—Jones refused to be treated until he saw for himself that integration was being carried out. Several black patients had to assure Jones that they had been moved to rooms in previously all-white wings before he finally allowed himself to be cared for.

By the end of 1961, Indianapolis was a significantly more integrated city than it had been twelve months earlier, and

Jim Jones was almost entirely responsible. He’d managed it without alienating the local white officials whose support he needed to do more. Jones was revered in the black community. Even those who didn’t belon...

Back in San Francisco, Jones preached a lot about reincarnation, comparing the moment of death and then immediate additional life to a flame passed from one candle to the next. Suicide continued to be a constant topic. Jones was against individuals killing themselves for any selfish reason. He warned his followers that “anyone [doing so] will go back 500 generations [and] 10,000 years” in the quest to achieve enlightenment and move to a higher spiritual plane. On Memorial Day, he took part in a citywide anti-suicide rally on the Golden Gate Bridge, which was traditionally frequented by despairing jumpers. His remarks took a prophetic turn: “Suicide is a symptom of an uncaring society. . . . The suicide is a victim of conditions which we cannot tolerate.” He added that, for the first time in his own life, he was in a suicidal mood.

On Jones’s instruction, Larry Schacht ordered one pound of sodium cyanide, enough for 1,800 lethal doses. It cost $8.85.

Jim Jones had wanted his grand gesture to make an impression on the entire world, and, to that extent, he succeeded. But the Jonestown deaths quickly became renowned not as a grandly defiant revolutionary gesture, but as the ultimate example of human gullibility.

But one misconception evolved into part of the cultural lexicon. Initially, most news outlets correctly reported that the Jonestown settlers died by ingesting cyanide that was stirred into a vat of Flavor Aid, an inexpensive powdered drink. But some reports mentioned Kool-Aid. As a familiar brand, “Kool-Aid” proved more memorable to the public than “Flavor Aid.” “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” became a jokey catchphrase for not foolishly following deranged leaders. “It . . . still hurts every time I hear it,” says Juanell Smart, who lost four children, her mother, and her uncle in Jonestown. “I hated that people laughed when they said it, like what happened was somehow funny.” There was nothing funny about what investigators found at Jonestown. Besides the mounting body count, they discovered that some of the Jonestown dead left messages explaining what they’d done. These provided convincing evidence that many went willingly to their deaths.

The murder of George Moscone and Harvey Milk added to a citywide sense of bewilderment and despair, but nowhere did it match the sense of loss and helplessness inside the fenced property on Geary Boulevard. In those dark days, there was one act of kindness. Dianne Feinstein, now acting mayor of San Francisco, came calling, not to badger the Temple members for money or to threaten them, but to ask if they were all right and to take some of them to breakfast.

In every society there are inequities, and in America the most obvious of these affect people of color and the poor. Demagogues recruit by uniting a disenchanted element against an enemy, then promising to use religion or politics or a combination of the two to bring about rightful change.

But there was something unique about Jones and those who chose to follow him. Traditionally, demagogues succeed by appealing to the worst traits in others: Follow me and you’ll have more, or, follow me and I’ll protect what you already have against those who want to take it away from you. Jim Jones attracted followers by appealing to the best in their nature, a desire for everyone to share equally. Beyond the very poorest members of society, who were clothed and fed and treated with respect, no one materially benefited from joining and belonging to Peoples Temple. Most members sacrificed personal possessions, from clothing and checking accounts to cars and houses for the privilege of helping others. They gave rather than got. It was never the Temple’s agenda to overthrow a government or in any sense force others to live as its members believed they should.

Jack Beam, one of Jones’s oldest and most devoted followers, who died with his leader in Jonestown, effectively described Peoples Temple in a poorly spelled but heartfelt affidavit written sometime in 1978: “[Members] believe that service to the Diety can best be expressed by service to ones fellow man, that they must—on a religious-philosophical imperitave—demonstrate goodness rather than just talking about it, and that this demonstration must be an ongoing part of their everyday lives.” These intentions weren’t enough. Peoples Temple is considered an example, but not in any positive sense. Kool-Aid rather than equality is what the rest of the world remembers. The survivors are left to console themselves, and even find some pride in the sincerity of their effort. Jim Jones Jr. sighs, smiles, and concludes, “What I’d say about Peoples Temple is, we failed, but damn, we tried.”