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1931 - 1965 | 1971 - 1978
1971 |
Peoples Temple buys an abandoned synagogue in San Francisco. Jones lives in the apartment upstairs. The growing Temple also buys property in Los Angeles and makes plans to spread into Seattle. |
1974 |
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1975 |
Peoples Temple campaign volunteers succeed in helping George Moscone win the San Francisco mayoral race. Other liberal candidates benefit from Peoples Temple manpower and grants, and reciprocate by speaking well of Jones' group. |
1976 |
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1977 |
August: Jones and almost a thousand followers decamp and relocate Peoples Temple to a remote jungle outpost, Jonestown, in the South American country of Guyana. Critics of Peoples Temple band together, calling themselves the Concerned Relatives. They seek help contacting their loved ones. |
1978 |
May: Deborah Layton Blakey escapes from Jonestown and Guyana and returns to the United States, leaving behind her mother (her brother and sister-in-law will arrive in Guyana before she can warn them of the conditions there). June 14: Deborah Layton Blakey signs an affidavit detailing the conditions in Jonestown, including suicide drills. Copies are sent to local and national news organizations, and officials in the U.S. State Department. The San Francisco Chronicle picks up the story.
November 6: Stephan and Tim Jones, sons of Jim Jones, leave Jonestown for Georgetown along with the rest of the Jonestown basketball team. They plan to play exhibition matches against the Guyanese national squad. November 7: Representative Leo Ryan of California's 11th District announces a fact-finding mission to Jonestown in Guyana. November 15: Ryan, along with two staff members, eight journalists and fourteen Concerned Relatives, arrives in Georgetown, Guyana. Ryan visits the Peoples Temple house in the city.
In Georgetown, Peoples Temple staffers receive an order to commit suicide. Four die but others, including Jones' sons, refuse. In Jonestown, Jim Jones issues a suicide order, commanding his followers to drink cyanide-laced Fla-Vor-Aid. Children are poisoned first.
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1931 - 1965 | 1971 - 1978
page created on 02.20.2007
Peoples Temple leases more than 3,800 acres near Port Kaituma, 
Mayor Moscone appoints Jim Jones to the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission.
Summer: New West magazine publishes an exposé of Peoples Temple as an organization that exploits and abuses its members for the benefit of Jim Jones.
Fall: The Concerned Relatives continue to pressure elected officials to conduct an investigation of Jonestown.
November 17: Ryan arrives in Jonestown without many of his entourage. The visitors are treated to music and dance, and are well fed. One resident slips a note to a reporter asking for help leaving Jonestown.
November 18: Ryan invites anyone who wants to leave to join him in the return trip to the States. Sixteen people "defect." A knife-wielding Temple member attacks Ryan but the congressman is protected by other members. As the party waits for their airplanes to leave the Port Kaituma airstrip, a truck arrives from Jonestown. The Temple members on the truck shoot 16 people, killing five, including Ryan.
November 19: Alerted to the violence but unwilling to approach the compound under cover of darkness, Guyanese armed forces arrive a day after the massacre. More than 900 corpses are discovered, bloated in the heat. Jones is found dead of a gunshot wound. The survivors of the airstrip attack are airlifted to medical care.