James Warren " Jim " Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 death of more than 900 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the deaths of nine other people at a nearby airstrip and in Georgetown.
Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple in that state in the 1950s. Jones and the Temple later moved to California, and both gained notoriety with the move of the Temple's headquarters to San Francisco in the mid-1970s.
The greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001, the tragedy at Guyana also ranks among the largest mass suicides in history. One of those who died at the nearby airstrip was Leo Ryan, who became the only Congressman murdered in the line of duty in the history of the United States.
Early life
Jim Jones was born in Crete, Indiana, a rural unincorporated community in Randolph County near the Ohio border, to James Thurman Jones (May 31, 1887 – May 29, 1951), a World War I veteran, and Lynetta Putnam (April 16, 1902 – December 11, 1977). He would later claim part Cherokee descent through his mother, though this was likely false. Economic difficulties during the Great Depression necessitated that Jones' family move to nearby Lynn, Indiana in 1934. Jim Jones and a childhood friend both claimed that Jones' father was associated with the Ku Klux Klan.
In interviews for the 2007 documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple , childhood acquaintances recalled Jones as being a "really weird kid" who was "obsessed with religion ... obsessed with death", and claimed that he frequently held funerals for small animals, and had purportedly fatally stabbed a cat.
Jones was a voracious reader as a child and studied Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler carefully, noting each of their strengths and weaknesses. After Jones' parents separated, he moved with his mother to Richmond, Indiana. Jones graduated from Richmond High School early and with honors in December 1948.
Jones married Marceline Baldwin, a nurse, in 1949 and moved to Bloomington, Indiana. Jones attended Indiana University at Bloomington, where a speech by Eleanor Roosevelt about the plight of African Americans impressed him. Jones' sympathetic statements about communism offended Marceline's grandmother. In 1951, Jones moved to Indianapolis, where he attended night school at Butler University, earning a degree in secondary education in 1961.
Building the Temple
Indiana beginnings
Further information: Peoples TempleIn 1951, Jones became a member of the Communist Party USA, and began attending meetings and rallies in Indianapolis. Jones became flustered with harassment he received during the McCarthy Hearings, particularly regarding meetings between Jones and his mother with Paul Robeson. He also became frustrated with what he perceived to be ostracism of open communists in the United States, especially during the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. This frustration, among other things, provoked a seminal moment for Jones in which he asked himself "how can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church."
Jones' interest in religion began during his childhood, primarily because he found making friends difficult, though initially he vacillated on his church of choice. Jones was surprised when a Methodist superintendent helped Jones to get a start in the church even though he knew Jones to be a communist and Jones did not meet him through the American Communist Party. In 1952, Jones became a student pastor in Sommerset Southside Methodist Church, but left that church because its leaders barred him from integrating blacks into his congregation. Around this time, Jones witnessed a faith-healing service at the Seventh Day Baptist Church. He observed that it attracted people and their money and concluded that, with financial resources from such healings, he could help accomplish his social goals.
Jones then began his own church, which changed names until it became the Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel. Jones sold pet monkeys door-to-door to raise funds for his church.
Jones moved away from the American Communist Party and Maoists when ACP members and Mao Zedong became critical of some of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's policies.
Integrationist
In 1960, Indianapolis Democratic Mayor Charles Boswell appointed Jones as a director of the Human Rights Commission. Jones ignored Boswell's advice to keep a low profile, finding new outlets for his views on local radio and television programs. When the mayor and other commissioners asked Jones to curtail his public actions, Jones resisted and was wildly cheered at a meeting of the NAACP and Urban League when he yelled for his audience to be more militant, and climaxed with "Let my people go!"
During this time, Jones also helped to integrate churches, restaurants, the telephone company, the police department, a theater, an amusement park, and the Methodist Hospital. After swastikas were painted on the homes of two African American families, Jones personally walked the neighborhood comforting African Americans and counseling white families not to move, in order to prevent white flight. Jones set up stings to catch restaurants refusing to serve African American customers. Jones wrote to American Nazi leaders and then leaked their responses to the media. When Jones was accidentally placed in the black ward of a hospital after a collapse in 1961, Jones refused to be moved and began to make the beds, and empty the bed pans, of black patients. Political pressures resulting from Jones' actions caused hospital officials to desegregate the wards.
Jones received considerable criticism in Indiana for his integrationist views. White owned businesses and locals were critical of him. A swastika was placed on the Temple, a stick of dynamite was left in a Temple coal pile and a dead cat was thrown at Jones' house after a threatening phone call. Other incidents occurred, though some suspect that Jones himself may have been involved in at least some of them.
Adoption of children of color
Jim and Marceline Jones adopted several children of at least partial non-Caucasian ancestry; he referred to the clan as his "rainbow family," and stated: "Integration is a more personal thing with me now. It's a question of my son's future." That comported with Jones' portrayal of the Temple overall as a "rainbow family."
The couple adopted three children of Korean-American ancestry: Lew, Suzanne and Stephanie. Jones had been encouraging Temple members to adopt orphans from war ravaged Korea. Jones had long been critical of the United States' opposition to communist leader Kim Il-Sung's 1950 invasion of South Korea, calling it the "war of liberation" and stating that "the south is a living example of all that socialism in the north has overcome." In 1954, he and his wife also adopted Agnes Jones, who was partly of Native American descent. Agnes was 11 at the time of her adoption. Suzanne Jones was adopted at the age of six in 1959. In June 1959, the couple had their only biological child, Stephan Gandhi Jones.
Two years later, in 1961, the Joneses became the first white couple in Indiana to adopt a black child, James Warren Jones, Jr. Marceline was once spat upon while she carried Jim Jr.
The couple also adopted another son, who was white, named Tim. Tim Jones, whose birth mother was a member of the Peoples Temple, was originally named Timothy Glen Tupper.
Asylum
Belo Horizonte
After a 1961 Temple speech about nuclear apocalypse, and a January 1962 Esquire Magazine article listing Belo Horizonte, Brazil, as a safe place in a nuclear war, Jones traveled with his family to the Brazilian city with the idea of setting up a new Temple location.
On his way to Brazil, Jones made his first trip into Guyana. After arriving in Belo Horizonte, the Joneses rented a modest three bedroom home. Jones studied the local economy and receptiveness of racial minorities to his message, though language remained a barrier. Jones was careful to not portray himself as a communist in foreign territory, and spoke of an apostolic communal lifestyle rather than of Castro or Marx.
After becoming frustrated with the lack of resources in the locale, in mid-1963, the Joneses moved to Rio de Janeiro. There, they worked with the poor in Rio's slums. Jones also explored local Brazilian religion.
Jones was plagued by guilt for leaving behind the Indiana civil rights struggle and possibly losing what he had struggled to build there. When Jones' associate preac
Guyana Gazette Forums: Venezuela blows up boats in Guyana waters, or V ...
"Cuyuni invasion" 'Say you were wrong and pay up' - Venezuelan paper urges its govt SN, Friday, November 23, 2007 A Venezuelan publication is calling on that country's government ...
Guyana Gazette Forums: Kaieteur News Supports National Awards For ...
Author Topic: Kaieteur News Supports National Awards For Extra-Judicial Killers?
Newspapers
Royal Gazette (The) Georgetown; Guyana: 1816-1824: Guiana Chronicle & Demerara Gazette (The) Georgetown; Guyana: 1819-1822: Royal Gazette (The) Georgetown; Guyana
My Choice For National Heroes « Guyana Gazette
by Keith R. Williams. The criteria for heroes set by Kenneth Daniels are virtually unreachable in Guyana . Let’s be realistic. Persons whose personalities endear them to the ...
Freedom of Information and the Press « Guyana Gazette
by Keith R. Williams. The first Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America states that: CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING AN ESTABLISMENT OF RELIGION, OR ...
The Gazette Subscriber Services | GazetteOnline.com
Breaking news and headlines for eastern Iowa, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City including local, regional and national news, sports and business news, eastern Iowa news updates, expanded ...
Parliament of the Republic of Guyana
Enacted by the Parliament of Guyana:-T 44 HE OFFICIAL GAZETTE [LEGAL SUPPLEMENT] -- C 15TH JANUARY, 2009 2 Short title.
Jan 7, 2006 - Gazette, The (Colorado Springs) Newspaper | Find ...
Gazette, The (Colorado Springs) View more issues: Articles in Jan 7, 2006 issue of Gazette ... Brazil-Guyana bridge.(THE REGION)(Brief article) MSC Cruises prepares.(THE REGION)(Brief ...
The Weekly Gazette ePaper ::
The Weekly Gazette free daily ePaper - Watch digital ePaper of India from around the world which is developed by Pressmart.
Guyana finds possible debris from Air France crash | The Journal ...
GEORGETOWN, Guyana – A fisherman in Guyana apparently has found a large piece of a plane that authorities suspect might belong to the Air France jet that crashed in the Atlantic ...