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Jim Jones

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For other people named Jim Jones, see Jim Jones (disambiguation).
James Warren "Jim" Jones
File:01-jones-jim.jpg
Jim Jones. photo credit: The Jonestown Institute
Born(1931-05-13)May 13, 1931
United States Lynn, Indiana
DiedNovember 18, 1978(1978-11-18) (aged 47)
Guyana Jonestown, Guyana
Occupation(s)Leader, Peoples Temple

James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was the American founder of the Peoples Temple group, which became synonymous with group suicide after the November 18, 1978 mass murder - suicide by poison in their isolated agricultural intentional community called Jonestown, located in Guyana. Nine hundred and thirteen (913) people drank cyanide after Jones ordered his men to kill visiting Congressman Leo Ryan and numerous members of his entourage.

Early life and founding of Temple

Jones was born in Lynn, Indiana to Lynetta Putnam and James Thurman Jones.[1] He graduated from Richmond High School in Richmond, Indiana. He became a preacher in the 1950s. He obtained a bachelors degree at Butler University in 1961, and after graduate school at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, Jim sold pet monkeys door-to-door to raise the money to fund his own church [2] that would be named Wings of Deliverance. He later renamed his church the Peoples Temple, located in Indianapolis. He gained respectability when he became an ordained minister in 1964 in the mainstream Christian denomination, Disciples of Christ. The church was exceptional for its equal treatment of African Americans and many of them became members of the church. He started a struggle for racial equality and social justice, which he dubbed apostolic socialism. After leaving Indiana, the Peoples Temple cult built its home in Redwood Valley, California, because Jones believed it was one of the few places in the world likely to survive a nuclear holocaust. Jones authored a booklet, called "The Letter Killeth" pointing out what he felt were the contradictions, absurdities, and atrocities in the Bible, but the booklet also stated that the Bible contained great truths. He was particularly fascinated with how he could manipulate people. Rather than quitting after he got what he wanted, Jones pushed the envelope to see just how far he could go before the person objected. Throughout the years the young man perfected his craft and was very skilled in his new found art.[3] He claimed to be an incarnation of Jesus, Akhenaten, Buddha, Lenin, and Father Divine and performed supposed miracle healings to attract new members. Members of Jones' church called Jones "Father" and believed that their movement was the solution to the problems of society and many did not distinguish Jones from the movement. The group gradually moved away from the mainstream.

Jonestown and mass murder-suicide

File:Jim Jones brochure of Peoples Temple.jpg
Brochure of the Peoples Temple, portraying cult leader Jim Jones as the loving father of the "Rainbow Family".
Main article: Jonestown

In the summer of 1977, Jones and most of the 1000 members of the Peoples Temple moved to Guyana from San Francisco after an investigation into the church for tax evasion had begun. Jones named the closed settlement Jonestown after himself. His intention was to create an agricultural utopia in the jungle, free from racism and based on socialist principles.

People who had left the organization prior to its move to Guyana told the authorities of brutal beatings, murders and of a mass suicide plan, but were not believed. In spite of the tax evasion allegations, Jones was still widely respected for setting up a racially mixed church which helped the disadvantaged. Around 70% of the inhabitants of Jonestown were black and impoverished. The religious scholar Mary McCormick Maaga argued that Jones' authority waned after he moved to the isolated commune, because there he was not needed anymore for recruitment and he could not hide his drug addiction from rank and file members.[4] Consequently, he lost some of his power over inner-circle members.[citation needed]

In November 1978, U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan led a fact-finding mission to the Jonestown settlement in Guyana after allegations by relatives in the U.S. of human rights abuses. Ryan's delegation arrived in Jonestown on November 15 and spent three days interviewing residents. The delegation left hurriedly on the morning of Saturday November 18 after an attempt was made on Ryan's life by a man armed with a knife. The attack was thwarted, bringing the visit to an abrupt end. Congressman Ryan and his people succeeded in taking with them roughly 15 Peoples Temple members who had expressed a wish to leave. At that time, Jones made no attempt to prevent their departure. However, Peoples Temple survivors reported that a group from Jonestown left shortly afterwards in a truck with the intention of stopping the delegation and members from leaving the country alive.

Surviving delegation members later told police that, as they were boarding two planes at the airstrip, the truckload of Jones' armed guards arrived and began to shoot at them. It was here that Ryan was shot and killed. At the same time, one of the supposed defectors, Larry Layton, drew a weapon and began to fire on members of the party. When the gunmen left, six people were dead: Representative Ryan, Don Humphrey, a reporter from NBC, a cameraman from NBC, a newspaper photographer, and one defector from the Peoples Temple. The former California State Senator Jackie Speier, a staff member for Rep. Ryan in 1978, Richard Dwyer, the Deputy Chief of Mission from the U.S. Embassy at Georgetown and allegedly an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, and a producer for NBC News, Bob Flick, survived the attack.

Later that same day, 909 of the remaining inhabitants of Jonestown, 276 of them children, died in what has commonly been labeled a mass suicide. However, there is much ambiguity over whether many who died committed suicide or were in fact murdered. Some followers obeyed Jones' instructions to commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced grape flavored Flavor Aid[5]. (This is often misidentified as Kool-aid; [6] Others died by forced cyanide injection or by shooting. Jones was found dead sitting in a deck chair with a gunshot wound to the head, although it is unknown if he had been murdered or committed suicide. The autopsy on his body showed levels of the barbiturate pentobarbital that could have been lethal to humans who have not developed physiological tolerance. His drug usage (including various LSD and marijuana experimentations) was confirmed by his son, Stephan, and Jones's doctor in San Francisco.

Other issues

Jones married Marceline Baldwin, with whom he had two sons, one biological and one adopted. Their biological son, Stephan Gandhi Jones, did not take part in the mass suicide because he was away, playing with the Peoples Temple basketball team in a game against the Guyanese national team. Jones' adopted son, Jim Jones Jr., was African American. Jim and Marceline were the first white couple in Indiana to adopt an African American child [7]. Jones claimed to be the biological father of John Victor Stoen, who was the legal son of Grace Stoen and her husband Timothy Stoen. The custody dispute over Stoen had great symbolic value for the Peoples Temple and intensified the conflict with its opponents who consisted of, among others, a group called the "Concerned Relatives".

Marceline and Jim Jones' son Stephan Jones is today a businessman and family man, married with three children of his own. He appeared in the recent documentary Jonestown: Paradise Lost which aired in the USA on the History Channel. He states that he won't watch the film and that he does not mourn his father, only his mother Marceline.[8]

In MacArthur Park, Los Angeles on December 13, 1973, Jones was arrested and charged with soliciting a man for sex in a movie theater bathroom known for homosexual activity. [9] The man, as it turns out, was an undercover Los Angeles Police Department vice officer. Jones is on record as later telling his followers that he was "the only true heterosexual", but at least one account exists of his sexually abusing a male member of his congregation in front of the followers, ostensibly to prove the man's own homosexual tendencies.[10]

One of his sources of inspiration was the controversial cult leader Father Divine[11]. Jones had borrowed the term "revolutionary suicide" from Black Panther leader Huey Newton who had argued "the slow suicide of life in the ghetto" ought to be replaced by revolutionary struggle that would end only in victory (socialism and self determination) or revolutionary suicide (death).

Literature

  • Shiva Naipaul: Black & White, Hamish Hamilton, London 1980, ISBN 0-241-10337-1
  • Deborah Layton: Seductive Poison, Anchor Books, 1999, ISBN 0-385-48984-6

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Jim Jones.

Footnotes

  1. ^ http://www.wargs.com/other/jonesjw.html
  2. ^ http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/11/18/JONESTOWN.TMP
  3. ^ http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/PrimarySources/letter-rev.htm
  4. ^ , McCormick Maaga, Mary Hearing the voices of Jonestown, 1998 Syracuse University press, ISBN 0-8156-0515-3
  5. ^ Jonestown Report
  6. ^ Peoples Temple (Jonestown) this is also where the term, "to drink the kool-aid" orginated) The Religious Movements Homepage Project The University of Virginia
  7. ^ PBS biography on Jim Jones
  8. ^ The son who survived Jonestown By Bill Brownstein The Gazette, Canada/March 9, 2007
  9. ^ “Sex in Peoples Temple” by David Wise (2004)
  10. ^ “Sex in Peoples Temple” by David Wise (2004)
  11. ^ FAQ: Who was the leader of Peoples Temple? from Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & peoples' Temple

References


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