The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

by Jeff Guinn

The next day, Jones reconvened everyone in the pavilion and instructed them to write essays on the topic “What I Would Do if This Were the Last White Night.” The responses were chilling. Some suggested it would be better to die fighting, taking as many of the enemy with them as possible. One woman wrote that she was willing to take poison, but “only after putting the children to sleep. This would be hard for me because I don’t like to face the fact of killing my own child.” Another admitted, “I am scared of dying a long painful death. . . . I can’t believe that after all this struggle and pain we all will die.” Everyone wrote something, and though no one directly challenged the apparent certainty of future mass suicide, some now wondered if Jones actually intended to order such a precipitous act. It might be another of his ploys to gauge loyalty. Enough settlers thought so for Dick Tropp to send Jones a private memo: “People with a fair degree of savvy and intelligence [are beginning to believe that] White Nights are really a kind of elaborate ritual testing.” Jones, satisfied that February 16 had served his purpose, did not respond.