American Experience

On-screen text: On November 18th, 1978, in Jonestown, Guyana, 909 members of Peoples Temple died in what has been called the largest mass suicide in modern history.

Deborah Layton, Peoples Temple Member, Author, Seductive Poison: Nobody joins a cult. Nobody joins something they think is going to hurt them. You join a religious organization, you join a political movement, and you join with people that you really like.

Jim Jones Jr., Peoples Temple Member: I think in everything that I tell you about Jim Jones, there is going to be a paradox. Having this vision to change the world, but having this whole undercurrent of dysfunction that was underneath that vision.

Jim Jones (archival): Some people see a great deal of God in my body. They see Christ in me, a hope of glory.

Hue Fortson Jr., Peoples Temple Member: He said, “If you see me as your friend, I’ll be your friend. As you see me as your father, I’ll be your father.” He said, “If you see me as your God, I’ll be your God.”

Kristine Kravitz, Peoples Temple Member: Jim Jones talked about going to the Promised Land and then, pretty soon, we were seeing film footage of Jonestown.

Jim Jones (archival): Rice, black-eyed peas, Kool-Aid.

Kristine Kravitz, Peoples Temple Member: We all wanted to go. I wanted to go.

Grace Stoen, Peoples Temple Member: Peoples Temple truly had the potential to be something big and powerful and great, and yet for whatever reason, Jim took the other road.

Jackie Speier, Aide to Congressman Leo Ryan: On the night of the 17th, it was still a vibrant community. I would never have imagined that 24 hours later, they would all be dead.

Jim Jones (archival, subtitles): Die with a degree of dignity! Don’t lay down with tears and agony! It’s nothing to death. It’s just stepping over into another plane. Don’t, don’t be this way.

Rebecca Moore, Relative of Peoples Temple Member: I vividly remember the first time that I met Jim Jones. My sister Carolyn had invited my parents and my younger sister and I to visit her in Potter Valley. We came and there was this strange man in her house, and her husband wasn’t there. Annie and I were sent out to go on a walk. When we came back, something had happened. Something terrible had happened, because everyone had red eyes except for Jim Jones.

We didn’t really get the story until we were in the car going home. He was carrying on an adulterous relationship with my sister. And because his wife couldn’t relate to him as a wife — that Carolyn had taken over that role. Everything was plausible, except in retrospect, the whole thing seems absolutely bizarre.

On-screen text: Peoples Temple Children’s Choir — Welcome

(Singing, archival): Welcome, welcome all of you.

Janet Shular, Peoples Temple Member: The first time I visited Peoples Temple, I drove at the urging of a friend — a co-worker — to Redwood Valley.

Stanley Clayton, Peoples Temple Member: We all got suited down, neck-tied and everything. You know, and we were sharp.

Tim Carter, Peoples Temple Member: As soon as I walked into the San Francisco temple, I was home.

Stanley Clayton, Peoples Temple Member: I was one of those kind of guys that — I used drugs. I was an alcoholic. I drunk alcohol and stuff like that. And — and all these people that were like my age, they were clean.

Woman (archival): Before I came here, I was taking LSD, marijuana, every type of dope you can imagine. Without our pastor, Jim Jones, to teach me the right way, I would not be in college right now.

Stanley Clayton, Peoples Temple Member: And for me, that was like, “Wow, man.” I liked that.

Woman (archival): Thank you very much, thank you.

Hue Fortson Jr., Peoples Temple Member: There was an interracial group. The choir was interracial and they used to sing this song — “Never heard a man speak like this man before. Never heard a man speak like this man before. All the days of my life, ever since I been born, I never heard a man speak like this man before.” After they sang one or two songs, the whole place was lit up.

On-screen text: Peoples Temple Choir — Something Got a Hold of Me

(Singing, archival): Something got a hold of me, oh yes indeed. I said something got a hold of me.

Garrett Lambrev, Peoples Temple Member: The Peoples Temple services, they had life, they had soul, they had power. We were alive in those services.

Claire Janaro, Peoples Temple Member: I would be up jumping in the balcony and clapping my hands. If you came in as a stranger and didn’t know anything about the politics, you were thinking you were entering an old-time religion service.

Hue Fortson Jr., Peoples Temple Member: By the time Jones did come out to do his speaking, the table had already been set.

Jim Jones (archival): I represent divine principle, total equality, a society where people own all things in common. Where there is no rich or poor. Where there are no races. Wherever there is people struggling for justice and righteousness, there I am. And there I am involved.

Neva Sly Hargrave, Peoples Temple Member: What he spoke about were things that were in our hearts. The government was not taking care of the people. There were too many poor people out there. There were poor children.

Jim Jones (archival): The world is like a human family. The little child may not be able to go and draw a paycheck, but the father guarantees the childcare. The grandmother may not be able to work anymore, but the father and mother guarantees her the right to live.

Deborah Layton, Peoples Temple Member, Author, Seductive Poison: Every single person felt that they had a purpose there and that they were exceptionally special. And that is how he brought so many young college kids in, so many older black women in, so many people from diverse backgrounds who realized that there was something bigger than themselves that they needed to be involved in — and that Jim Jones offered that.

Stanley Clayton, Peoples Temple Member: I went home, told mom — “You know what, this is the right church for me.” It was the next week that I became a member of Peoples Temple.

(On-screen text): Indiana, 1931-1965

Jim Jones (archival, subtitles): There’s a little town in Indiana. The moment I think of it a great deal of pain comes. As a child I was undoubtedly one of the poor in the community, never accepted. Born as it were on the wrong side of the tracks.

Phyllis Wilmore-Zimmerman, Childhood Friend: I grew up with Jimmy Jones. We started first grade together. My brothers used to go over to Jimmy’s house and hung around his barn, which was where he played.

Chuck Wilmore, Childhood Friend: From the time I was five years old, I thought Jimmy was a really weird kid, there was something not quite right. He was obsessed with religion; he was obsessed with death.

Phyllis Wilmore-Zimmerman, Childhood Friend: My brothers came back with stories of him conducting funerals for small animals that had died.

Chuck Wilmore, Childhood Friend: A friend of mine told me that he saw Jimmy kill a cat with a knife. Well having a funeral for it was a little strange, killing the animal was very strange.

Phyllis Wilmore-Zimmerman, Childhood Friend: Jimmy’s father did not work, did not have a job, and was a drunk. Jim’s mother had to work in order to support the family.

Jim Jones Jr., Peoples Temple Member: And he was kind of left to his own devices. Kind of the kid who ran wild in the street, you know what I mean? Listen, he was in a dysfunctional family. We got a nice name for it now. But when you live in a dysfunctional family, you think it’s normal.

Jim Jones (archival, subtitles): Feeling as an outcast, I’d early developed a sensitivity for the problems of blacks. I brought the only black young man in the town home and my dad said that he could not come in and I said, “Then I shan’t,” and I did not see my dad for many years.

John R. Hall, Sociologist: In Lynn, Jim Jones looked for community and couldn’t find community, in Lynn as a town — which had a population of what, a thousand people? But he did find community in the Pentecostal Church.

Tim Reiterman, Journalist: He saw that they were a surrogate home. He saw that the preachers were like father figures to their congregations. And that role represented power over the lives of your congregation.

John R. Hall, Sociologist: Jim Jones started out on the revival preaching circuit, learning the ropes of being a preacher. And once he started doing that, it became clear that he could get a following.

June Cordell, Relative of Peoples Temple Member: The first time I met Jim Jones was Easter 1953. My mother-in-law, Edith Cordell, had a monkey and it hung itself and she wanted to replace the monkey. So she looked in the Indianapolis Star, and in that Indianapolis Star was Jim Jones’s ad that he had some monkeys to sell. So it was through that that she met Jim Jones, and came back saying that he had invited her to church this next Sunday.

(On-screen text): Voice of Jim Jones, 1953

June Cordell, Relative of Peoples Temple Member: It didn’t make no difference what color you were. It was everybody welcome there in that church and he made it very plain from the platform.

Eugene Cordell, Relative of Peoples Temple Member: We had some people that disagreed with Jimmy. They got up in the audience and they said they disagreed with him. They did not like this integration part of the services. We did ask people to leave the church one night because of that.

Jim Jones Jr., Peoples Temple Member: I was the first Negro child adopted by a Caucasian family in the state of Indiana. Jim and Marceline actually went to adopt a Caucasian child. The story goes that I was crying real loud and it drew attention for Marceline to come over, and once she picked me up, I stopped crying. My family was a template of a rainbow family. We had an African American, we had two American Asian and we had his natural son, homemade.

Rev. Garnett Day, Minister: Jim was breaking new ground in race relations at a time when the ground was still pretty hard against that. Jim Jones was hated and despised by some people, particularly in the white community.

Fielding McGehee, Relative of Peoples Temple Member: There had been pressures on him to leave Indianapolis. He thought that Indianapolis was too racist of a place for him to be, and he wanted to take his people out.

Rebecca Moore, Relative of Peoples Temple Member: California is perceived to be a very progressive state. This would be the place to implement the dream of racial equality. Not Indianapolis, which seems hopeless, but California, which seems to be the Promised Land.

Fielding McGehee, Relative of Peoples Temple Member: He chose Ukiah in northern California — about 90 miles north of San Francisco — because there was an article in Esquire Magazine that said that Ukiah was one of the nine places in the world that in the event of thermonuclear attack, people would survive.

Eugene Cordell, Relative of Peoples Temple Member: I told Edith, “If you follow Jimmy to California, you’re crazy.” So what did Jimmy do, but took her to a psychiatrist and sent me a certified letter that she is of sound mind, and she is not crazy. I was there the afternoon that Edith drove away. I didn’t know I’d never see her again.

On-screen text: Ukiah, 1965-1974

Jim Jones Jr., Peoples Temple Member: The move to California was really fun. There were about twelve to fifteen cars driving across United States and making that journey to a place that none of us knew, you know — none of us could even imagine. We were going to California, our new world.

On-screen text: Peoples Temple Farm, Ukiah — Redwood Valley, California.

Claire Janaro, Peoples Temple Member: When I saw Redwood Valley, I couldn’t believe my eyes because it was like a paradise. It was rural. It was green. There were grape vines everywhere, and I fell in love. I said this is got to be a perfect way to live.

Jim Jones (archival): We started with about a hundred and forty-one people and from that, we’ve grown to a very thriving congregation. We have about every level of society, all socio-economic income strata — professional down to the ordinary field worker, field laborer. Really, it’s beautiful to see that all these divisions have been broken down — not only race, but any differences of economic position.

Joyce Shaw-Houston, Peoples Temple Member: The focus of Jim’s message was taken from the Bible, where Jesus in his earliest days told people to sell all things and have all things in common.

Jim Jones (archival): Jesus Christ had the most revolutionary teachings to be said, in the sense that he said to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take in the stranger, administer to those who are widows and afflicted in their suffering. And we feel that no one really tried Christianity too effectively in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Deborah Layton, Peoples Temple Member, Author, Seductive Poison: The membership increased substantially as he procured more and more Greyhound buses and fixed them up, and every summer he began this cross-country tour.

Claire Janaro, Peoples Temple Member: The purpose of the bus trips was to spread Jim’s beliefs about socialism and the world, and how we can live a better life and about an integrated lifestyle. But behind that, I think it was to gather more members for the Temple.

On-screen text: Peoples Temple Choir — He’s Able

(Singing, archival): As pilgrims here, we sometimes journey.

Bryan Kravitz, Peoples Temple Member: I decided not to go to Vietnam, and I was just at the point of what am I going to do with myself? I heard Jim Jones was going to be coming to Philadelphia, and coming to Benjamin Franklin High School. And I went Wednesday night and I listened to him, and I was impressed by how it was such an interracial group and people were really happy.

Jim Jones (archival): You got nothing to lose. Who else is going to stand and look you in the face and say, “Come and I’ll give you a job. Come and I’ll give you a home. Come and I’ll give you a bed?” “But I’ve got nothing but a pension.” “Go and leave your pension behind,” who else will tell you that? Who’ll tell you, “I’ll put you on that bus tomorrow?”

Bryan Kravitz, Peoples Temple Member: I heard Jim Jones talking about equality among races, what it’s like living in California, in the Redwood Valley, the good works that they’re doing. Things that, like, I wanted to get involved with, but didn’t even know where to make an entrée. And all of a sudden, the answer was there.

Jim Jones (archival): Somebody is gonna get on the freedom train in Philadelphia!

Bryan Kravitz, Peoples Temple Member: He was there for three evenings, and the third evening I went off on the bus and came to California.

Garrett Lambrev, Peoples Temple Member: When I joined Peoples Temple in the spring of 1966, there were exactly eighty-one members. Five years later, an extended family of eighty people had become an organization of thousands.

Rebecca Moore, Relative of Peoples Temple Member: Peoples Temple really was a black church. It was led by a white minister, but in terms of the worship service, commitment to the social gospel, its membership — it functioned completely like a black church.

Jim Jones Jr., Peoples Temple Member: He talked black. He really understood it. He understood how it was to be treated differently. And that’s from his roots coming out of Lynn.

Juanell Smart, Peoples Temple Member: When people heard Jim, they didn’t look upon him as being a white preacher, you know. People didn’t look at Jim as being white. He was not white. He was just their preacher.

Jim Jones (archival): You going to go to Texas with me when I have that campaign?

Senior Woman (archival): I was just wondering whether I could go or not. I would like to go.

Jim Jones (archival): Why of course you’d go, you went to Mexico with me.