Jonestown: 30 Years Later

I am always searching for knowledge and understanding in history. Today marks the 30th year anniversary of Jonestown in Guyana. If you have never heard of Jonestown, I will do my best to give you a short rundown of the events which led up to November 18, 1978 and the events that happened on that awful day.

Jim Jones became interested in religion at a young age and as a teen, studied the works and words of Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, and Ghandi. Along with religion, he was also somewhat obsessed with the plight of black people and the civil rights movement. Jones grew up in the midwest, Indiana to be exact, and graduated from Butler University in Indianapolis with a degree in secondary education.

Jones began, by many accounts, attending communist meetings and sought religion as a way to meet friends. He became a student pastor and began seeking church members in black communities, seeing the need for someone to help the the struggling race in the 60's. Some believe that Jones began befriending blacks simply because he knew that most of them would follow and feel obligated to someone that was helping them as much as he did. He and his wife Marcelene began adopting children of Korean decent and called themselves the "rainbow family". They also adopted an African American child they named Jim Jones, Jr. and they were the first white couple to adopt non-white children in Indiana.

Jones began the People's Temple in Indiana and then moved the Temple and his family to San Fransisco. He became well known in political circles and was appointed to the Chairman of the San Fransisco Housing Authority, a post that gave him entree to meet with such figures as Angela Davis, Harvey Milk, Governor Jerry Brown, and Rosalynn Carter.

But with increasing visibility in the media, he became more scrutinized. Wanting to form a utopia and to get away from increasing questions regarding the Temple and its practices, Jones sought to move his Temple abroad, and focued on Guyana because people there spoke English and were majority Black. There he wanted to create a "socialist paradise" and a "sanctuary".

Many family members of the People's Temple left behind in America began writing to the government about the cult-like happenings of the group. Congressman Leo Ryan became involved and went to Guyana to see for himself what was happening and to give the opportunity for those who wanted to leave People's Temple a way out.

On November 18, 1978 after meeting with followers, there were a few families who wanted to leave Jonestown. Jones was not happy about this but reluctantly allowed them to leave with Ryan. Ryan and the followers were getting ready to board two small planes when gunmen fired, killing Ryan, NBC cameraman Bob Brown, follower Patricia Parks, and reporters Don Harris and Greg Robinson. Several others were also shot and wounded during the attack.

Jones, after the killings, instructed over 900 followers to drink Flavor-Aid laced with cyanide, 276 of them were children. They all died and Jones either shot himself in the head or had someone else kill him. It was the greatest single loss of life of American civilians during a non-disaster before September 11th attacks. Only 33 of the followers survived. Most killed in this mass-suicide were African American.