American Experience

Deborah Layton, Peoples Temple Member, Author, Seductive Poison: As older people joined, it took a year or so and he’d convince the people that he was doing so much in the community and so why not rather than just tithe your twenty percent, why not sell your home, give the money to the church? And that is what people began to do.

Jim Jones (archival): Now in this church, what have we done in a short time? We have four senior citizens’ homes that are the most innovating, the most beautiful you want to see.

Mike Touchette, Peoples Temple Member: They had their own rooms, they had every need taken care of, they had their food provided. They were well looked after.

Jim Jones (archival): Now my home is stone block and there’s not a piece of new furniture in it. But our senior citizen homes, they’re elegant. And that’s beautiful.

John R. Hall, Sociologist: They were giving their life’s money and savings to the church, but in exchange, the church was agreeing to take care of them in the community, not just in a nursing home.

Neva Sly Hargrave, Peoples Temple Member: Well it got to the point where there were so many duties in the Temple that some people had to become full time. So when you were full-time Temple, you worked about twenty hours a day.

Laura Johnston Kohl, Peoples Temple Member: My week kind of ran like this — I’d work my regular job on Mondays, you know, eight to five. Then, I’d work on files.

Kristine Kravitz, Peoples Temple Member: There were people who ran rest homes. There were animals to be taken care of. There were the publications. Everybody had a job.

Laura Johnston Kohl, Peoples Temple Member: Wednesday night we’d have a meeting in Redwood Valley and I’d go to the meeting for — until probably 10 or 10:30.

Neva Sly Hargrave, Peoples Temple Member: We turned our paychecks over every time we got paid. And then we got an allowance — five dollars a week.

Laura Johnston Kohl, Peoples Temple Member: And Friday, I’d go to work and I’d get off of work, and I’d hop on the bus or drive the bus to San Francisco.

Tim Carter, Peoples Temple Member: If I had to go to the doctor, it was taken care of. If I had to go to the dentist, it was taken care of. If I needed clothes, that was taken care of.

Laura Johnston Kohl, Peoples Temple Member: And often on Saturday night, we’d have planning commission meetings until 2 or 3 in the morning.

Hue Fortson Jr., Peoples Temple Member: We would always try to let each other know the next day, “Well, how long did you sleep?” “Oh, I slept two hours.” “You only slept two? Well, I slept an hour-and-a-half.”

Laura Johnston Kohl, Peoples Temple Member: And then Sunday, we’d have a Sunday morning service and then around one o’clock hop on the buses, drive up, drop people off in San Francisco, and drive up to Redwood Valley.

Joyce Shaw-Houston, Peoples Temple Member: The longest I ever stayed awake was six days, and that’s with no coffee, no nothing.

Laura Johnston Kohl, Peoples Temple Member: It changed over the years, but it was always busy.

Hue Fortson Jr., Peoples Temple Member: Being in an environment where you’re constantly up, you’re constantly busy, and you’re made to feel guilty if you take too many luxuries like sleeping — you tend to not really think for yourself. And I did allow Jones to think for me because I figured that he had the better plan. I gave my rights up to him. As many others did.

Jim Jones (archival): Edie. Fingers, are your fingers numb in your right hand? Reach the fingers out that are bothering you. Now, is the pain gone?

Woman (archival): It’s gone.

Hue Fortson Jr., Peoples Temple Member: There was a senior citizen and we nicknamed her Power. He would have her to come up in the midst of one of his meetings, and she used to say, “The man got power. The man got power, ya’ll.” And the whole place would just go wild.

Jim Jones (archival): Take your glasses off. Let’s just dare in our faith. Now look at my face. I love you, the people love you, most importantly Christ loves you. What do you see?

Visually-Impaired Woman (archival): One finger.

Jim Jones (archival): One finger!

Neva Sly Hargrave, Peoples Temple Member: One of the most incredible healings, to me, was this little old lady and she was in a wheelchair. Jim said, “Darlin’, you know, today is your day. We’re going to — you’re going to get healed today.” He said, “We’re going to — we’re going to heal those legs of yours. You’re going to walk again.” And the whole auditorium went totally crazy.

Jim Jones (archival): Come forth, my dear. Stand up. Take that step. Bless your heart. Take that step.

Neva Sly Hargrave, Peoples Temple Member: And she takes this real slow, shaky step. She said, “I can feel it.” He said, “Yes, I know you can feel it. Now take your other leg and do it.” And so another real slow, shaky step and he says, “Now I want you to walk toward me.”

Jim Jones (archival): Move forward. Move forward. Move forward, darlin’. You can do it.

Neva Sly Hargrave, Peoples Temple Member: And she starts taking forward steps. And pretty soon she is walking. And she starts walking up one of the aisles. And pretty soon she’s running. Well, by this time the whole congregation’s running down these aisles with us — we’re all just running around the aisles, just hoopin’ and hollerin’ up a storm.

Later, I found out that this person that I had seen healed and cried with was really one of the secretaries, made up to look crippled and blind.

Jim Jones (singing, archival): Never shall forget what He’s done for me. Oh, what’s he done for me. Oh, what he’s done for me. Oh, what he’s done for me. I never shall forget what he’s done for me.

Deborah Layton, Peoples Temple Member, Author, Seductive Poison: For those people that hadn’t grown up in the apostolic world, Jim would say, you know — “I know this is different for you. But for people to come from extremely religious backgrounds — so that I can bring them forward to the message that’s so important for all of us today and that is activism — then I need to speak on each person’s level.”

Hue Fortson Jr., Peoples Temple Member: He said, “A lot of you people, you Christian people coming in, you’re so hung-up on this Bible.” He said, “This black book has held down black people for the last two-hundred years.” He said, “But I’m going to show you this has no power.” So he leaned way back like a football player and he flung it. And when he flung it and let it go, the place got dead quiet like. And he waited until it hit the floor — POW! When it hit the floor, he stood and he looked back and forth. He said, “Now, did you see any lightning come from the sky and strike me dead?”

Jim Jones (archival, subtitles): You’re gonna help yourself, or you’ll get no help! There’s only one hope of glory…That’s within you! Nobody’s gonna come out of the sky! There’s no heaven up there…We’ll have to make heaven down here!

Hue Fortson Jr., Peoples Temple Member: And he said, “What you need to believe in is what you can see.” 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, for those of you that don’t have a father.” He said, “If you see me as your savior, I’ll be your savior.” He said, even so, “If you see me as your God, I’ll be your God.”

Janet Shular, Peoples Temple Member: People lifted Jim to a level of adoration because many believed that he had healed them of cancer. Many believed that he had saved their son or daughter from an automobile accident. There were many reasons for many people to admire, love, excuse, overlook much of what Jim did.

Tim Carter, Peoples Temple Member: I had been in the Temple for just a few months. I was sent backstage in Los Angeles to — to get something for somebody, I don’t remember what. And Jones happened to be coming out of his room and he said, “Hi Tim, how are you doing? How is it going? How do you like everything so far?” And, “Oh, I like it a lot.” And, “you know, it’s really cool.” I don’t remember exactly.

And he reached up and kind of patted the back of my neck, and he said, “I’ll [expletive] you in the ass if you want.” And I just kind of stammered, “No.” You know, “No.” And he said, “Well, you know, if you ever want that, that’s okay, just let me know and we’ll do that.”

Joyce Shaw-Houston, Peoples Temple Member: Jim said that all of us were homosexuals, everyone except — he was the only heterosexual on the planet. And that the women were all lesbians and the guys were all gay. And so anyone that showed any interest in sex was just compensating.

Deborah Layton, Peoples Temple Member, Author, Seductive Poison: What he explained to each of us, and in sermons, was that sexual relationships were very selfish and they took away from the focus of the church — and that was to help others. Jim was not celibate. Nobody knew that until perhaps it was their time to find out. What he spoke from the pulpit wasn’t what he did behind the scenes.

Hue Fortson Jr., Peoples Temple Member: I remember one night, one of the brothers had stood up and said, “You know, I think everybody that wants Father to [expletive] them in the butt, you need to take an enema first.” I’m telling you the truth man, I’m telling you the truth. And then the question went on, “Well, how many of you in here have had him to do that?” And whether they were lying or just following suit, hands of the men just went up around the room.

And I’m sitting there petrified because I’m like, “Is this what it’s leading to, that I’m supposed to get to?” And I’m thinking, “hmmm.” But I played it off like, “Okay, I’m being cool. Okay, if that’s where they at, that’s not where I’m at.” Because I’m thinking, “My wife — I’m happy with my wife. With this sleep I’m not getting, I’m not getting enough anyway.”

Grace Stoen, Peoples Temple Member: One of the powerful things that Jim used, to keep us to not think, was that we were never really allowed to speak with one another. I’d look around and I’d say, “Am I the only one that feels this way?” I learned, eventually, not to say anything to anyone.

Jim Jones (archival): We had a lady who visited us a week ago here and was speaking to one at the door, and she was a member of a prominent church, a pastor’s wife, and she said, “I think that the poor should be made to control how many children they bring into the earth.” You remember? Some leading scientists say, “We have to have euthanasia.” Oh, no. Oh, no. Who’s going to decide who and when a person’s going to die? We must never allow that because this is the kind of thing that ushers in the terror of a Hitler’s Germany. We must not allow these kind of things to enter our consciousness.

Jim Jones Jr., Peoples Temple Member: My father used to tell me that people’s lives — sixty percent of people’s lives — were made on emotional decisions. Make your decisions — sixty percent of your decisions — based on logic, fact and reason, and allow emotion to be the secondary motivator. And — we were Star Trek fans. He and I were Star Trek fans, and he used to always say, “Just vulcanize yourself. Just vulcanize yourself.”

Joyce Shaw-Houston, Peoples Temple Member: We were celebrating New Years Eve. There were about a hundred and twenty people.

Neva Sly Hargrave, Peoples Temple Member: Jim started talking about our cause and he said, “This punch is going to be passed out to everybody here.” We all drank our punch and then he said, “You just drank poison. And we will all die, right here in the church, together as one.” The women were just screaming, “Oh no, my baby, my baby,” and others just sat there. And all of a sudden, Jim says, “That wasn’t poison you drank.”

Joyce Shaw-Houston, Peoples Temple Member: Jim said that this was a test of loyalty. He just wanted to see if we were truly committed to our cause, and that was how we would show it.

Janet Shular, Peoples Temple Member: Well it wasn’t about our loyalty, because we were demonstrating loyalty all the time. Coming there, being there in the meetings, sitting, listening — you know, supporting, working. And I thought it had a lot more to do with Jim’s sense of rehearsal. Did he feel like he was potent and — and omnipotent enough to really get people to kill themselves when he said so? And that frightened the hell out of me.

On-screen text: San Francisco, 1974-1977

Tim Reiterman, Journalist: Jim Jones, I think, realized that ultimately Ukiah was not the sort of climate where Peoples Temple would thrive. He wasn’t going to be gaining large numbers of members. He couldn’t declare himself to be a socialist god openly, certainly in a city like Ukiah.

Marshall Kilduff, Journalist: In San Francisco, Jones walked in on a sort of a wild kind of party, where there was a lot of new faces and new sources of power. And there was a sort of feeling that smaller groups — neighborhood groups, activist groups — had a bigger chance.

Rebecca Moore, Relative of Peoples Temple Member: I think the early sixties had been a time of great optimism; there was a belief that we could change the world through social movements. With various assassinations — Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy — there was definitely a feeling of hopelessness. The message of Peoples Temple was, “No, the dream is alive.”

Vernon Gosney, Peoples Temple Member: If you had a demonstration in San Francisco and you wanted people to show up, Jim Jones — the Peoples Temple — could be there in twenty minutes, with hundreds of people. And we would be enthusiastic. There was an attitude of, “We can change the world.” And that’s what we wanted to do.

Marshall Kilduff, Journalist: These people would be on time, they’d be polite and nice. They were a span of ages, a span of races. They were tailor-made for a political rally. To a politician, it was like a birthday cake times twelve.

Willie Brown, California State Assemblyman (archival): You have managed to make the many persons associated with Peoples Temple part of a family. If you are in need of healthcare, you get healthcare. If you’re in need of legal assistance of some sort, you get that. If you’re in need of transportation, you get that. And that’s the kind of religious thing that I am excited about, and have some respect for.

Tim Reiterman, Journalist: When vice presidential candidate, Walter Mondale, came to San Francisco, Jim Jones was part of the entourage that boarded his private jet. When Rosalyn Carter came to San Francisco, she gave Jim Jones a private audience. Jim Jones had political power that few people, let alone preachers, could have imagined.

Vernon Gosney, Peoples Temple Member: Jim Jones represented the Peoples Temple as a progressive movement that was threatened. That there were outside forces who didn’t want us to do what we were doing. And it was the government. The government was infiltrating and wiretapping and trying to kill people or assassinate people. That’s what was happening.

Hue Fortson Jr., Peoples Temple Member: He was always paranoid that someone was going to get in and try to kill him — that they had two people that had dedicated their lives, that they were going to jump in front of Jones and take the bullet, kind of like the secret service so to speak.

Neva Sly Hargrave, Peoples Temple Member: Jim started changing a lot in the seventies. He was taking drugs. I think he said it was his kidneys at the time. And he was getting more and more paranoid. Incredibly paranoid.

Vernon Gosney, Peoples Temple Member: There was always threats. Always, always, always, always threats. They were there. They were just about to try to destroy us if we weren’t always viligant [sic] about our movement.

There was a fire in the San Francisco Temple. The Temple was burned down and had to be rebuilt. The fire proved they are out to get us. They so don’t want us to do what we’re doing; they’ve burned down the Temple. They’ll do anything to keep us from doing what we’re doing. So we have to be even stronger.

Jim Jones (archival): What about the fact that the Ku Klux Klan has increased one hundred times in its membership? Where? Not Mississippi, I’m talking about New York State. It’s the church’s duty to have a place of protection for its people.

Laura Johnston Kohl, Peoples Temple Member: December of ’75, ninety of us went by plane, into Guyana, and saw where we were building the community there.

Jim Jones (archival, subtitles): See, they’ve made progress on the road and leveled it, clear in to five miles. And you’re seeing in the distance, housing complexes, that are being built.

Tim Carter, Peoples Temple Member: What I saw that creation as being was building a city where we could move and raise our children, outside of the oppression and the racism of the United States of America.

Mike Touchette, Peoples Temple Member: When I first went into Jonestown, it was just a footpath in the rainforest. We had Indians in front of us with machetes, and we had Indians behind us with machetes. Three-hundred miles into the jungle, we literally built a city in the middle of the jungle, in the middle of nowhere.

Mike Touchette, Peoples Temple Member (archival): Hello family. It’s been a — it’s such a joy and great pleasure being here, because of Father’s love. We are trying to make — and we are making a place of refuge for all of you here. There is no — nothing at all that I would — that I have any holdings here. I do not want to go back in any way, shape or form to the States. I love it here and this is the place where all of you are going to be.

Kristine Kravitz, Peoples Temple Member: Pretty soon we were seeing film footage of the first crew that went down there. We all wanted to go. I wanted to go. It looked like — like freedom.