WHAT WENT WRONG with the PEOPLES TEMPLE?” a Closer Look at Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple
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A New World Tragedy $13.95
... - Joumey to Nowhere A NEW WORLD TRAGEDY $13.95 Rarely does a book come along which so transcends its apparent subject that the reader is ultimately given something larger, richer, and more revealing than he might initially have imagined. Already published in Eng land to overwhelming acclaim (see back of jacket), Shiva Naipaul’s Journey to Nowhere is such a book — a “power ful, lucid, and beautifully written book” (The Spectator) that is destined to be one of the most controversial works of 1981. In it, this major writer takes us far beyond the events and surface details surrounding the tragedy of Jones town and the People’s Temple —and gives us his remark able, unique perspective on the deadly drama of ideas, environments, and unholy alliances that shaped those events both in Guyana and, even more significantly, in America. Journey to Nowhere is, on one level, a “brilliantly edgy safari” (New Statesman) inside the Third World itself—a place of increasing importance in our lives—and on another, a book about America, about the corrupt and corrupting ideologies and chi-chi politics of the past twenty years that enabled the Reverend Jim Jones and the Temple to flourish and grow powerful in California and Guyana. Drawing on interviews —with former members of the Temple, various officials, and such people as Buckmin ster Fuller, Huey Newton, Clark Kerr, and others —on documents, and most importantly, on his own strong, clear reactions to what he observed, Naipaul examines the Guyana of Forbes Bumham, the CIA stooge turned Third World socialist leader, whose stated ideals of socialism, racial brotherhood, and cooperative agricul tural enterprise coincided so neatly, we learn for the first time, with those of the People’s Temple — ideals that led all too easily to violence and death. -
The Psychology Behind Jonestown: When Extreme Obedience and Conformity Collide Abstract 2
THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND JONESTOWN 1 Anna Maria College The Psychology Behind Jonestown: When Extreme Obedience and Conformity Collide Submitted by: Claudia Daniela Luiz Author’s Note: This thesis was prepared by Law and Society and Psychology student, Claudia Daniela Luiz for HON 490, Honors Senior Seminar, taught by Dr. Bidwell and written under the supervision of Dr. Pratico, Psychology Professor and Head of the Psychology Department at Anna Maria College. RUNNING HEAD: THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND JONESTOWN 2 Abstract Notoriously throughout our history, cults of extremist religious views have made the headlines for a number of different crimes. Simply looking at instances like the Branch Davidians in Waco, or the members of the People’s Temple of Christ from Jonestown, it’s easy to see there is no lack of evidence as to the disastrous effects of what happens when these cults reach an extreme. When one person commits an atrocious crime, we can blame that person for their actions, but who do we blame when there’s 5 or even 900 people that commit a crime because they are so seemingly brainwashed by an individual that they’ll blindly follow and do whatever that individual says? Studying cases, like that of Jonestown and the People’s Temple of Christ, where extreme conformity and obedience have led to disastrous and catastrophic results is important because in the words of George Santayana “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” By studying and analyzing Jonestown and the mass suicide that occurred there, people can learn how Jim Jones was able to gain complete control of the minds of his over 900 followers and why exactly people began following him in the first. -
Three Ways of Understanding Government Classification of Jonestown Documents
Three Ways to Understand Government Classification of Jonestown Documents Revision of paper given at Religion, Secrecy and Security: Religious Freedom and Privacy in a Global Context An Interdisciplinary Conference at Ohio State University April 2004 Rebecca Moore In 2001 my husband, Fielding McGehee III, and I filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice. McGehee and Moore v. U.S. Department of Justice seeks to compel the Justice Department to provide an index—as required by law—to three compact disks of materials the FBI had pulled together from documents collected in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978 and from files generated in the agency’s subsequent investigation into the assassination of U.S. Congressman Leo J. Ryan. Our interest in Jonestown is both personal and professional, and in that respect I am writing as a participant observer regarding the events of 18 November 1978. I am a participant to the extent that my two sisters and nephew died in Jonestown in the mass murders-suicides which occurred under the direction of Jim Jones and I wish to know how and why. My status as a relative makes me an insider of sorts, with access to survivors of the tragedy, and with stature with government agencies as an interested party. But I am an observer as well, given my training in religious studies and my desire to interpret the events to my academic peers within a scholarly framework. I also wish to write the history of Peoples Temple, the group begun by Jones in Indianapolis which migrated to California and then to Guyana, as accurately and completely as possible. -
War Against the Panthers: a Study of Repression in America
War Against The Panthers: A Study Of Repression In America HUEY P. NEWTON / Doctoral Dissertation / UC Santa Cruz 1jun1980 WAR AGAINST THE PANTHERS: A STUDY OF REPRESSION IN AMERICA A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of: DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS by Huey P. Newton June 1980 PREFACE There has been an abundance of material to draw upon in researching and writing this dissertation. Indeed, when a friend recently asked me how long I had been working on it, I almost jokingly replied, "Thirteen years—since the Party was founded." 1 Looking back over that period in an effort to capture its meaning, to collapse time around certain significant events and personalities requires an admitted arbitrariness on my part. Many people have given or lost their lives, reputations, and financial security because of their involvement with the Party. I cannot possibly include all of them, so I have chosen a few in an effort to present, in C. Wright Mills' description, "biography as history." 2 This dissertation analyzes certain features of the Party and incidents that are significant in its development. Some central events in the growth of the Party, from adoption of an ideology and platform to implementation of community programs, are first described. This is followed by a presentation of the federal government's response to the Party. Much of the information presented herein concentrates on incidents in Oakland, California, and government efforts to discredit or harm me. The assassination of Fred Hampton, an important leader in Chicago, is also described in considerable detail, as are the killings of Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter and John Huggins in Los Angeles. -
Pub 315 NY Blocked
COMMUNITY INDEX for the 2019 Pennsylvania Tourism and Transportation Map www.penndot.gov PUB 315 (6-16) COUNTY COUNTY SEAT COUNTY COUNTY SEAT Adams Gettysburg . .P-11 Lackawanna Scranton....................V-5 Allegheny Pittsburgh . .D-9 Lancaster Lancaster ..................S-10 Armstrong Kittanning . .E-7 Lawrence New Castle................B-6 Beaver Beaver . .B-8 Lebanon Lebanon ....................S-9 Bedford Bedford . .J-10 Lehigh Allentown...................W-8 Berks Reading . .U-9 Luzerne Wilkes-Barre..............U-6 Blair Hollidaysburg . .K-9 Lycoming Williamsport...............P-6 Bradford Towanda . .S-3 McKean Smethport..................K-3 Bucks Doylestown . .X-9 Mercer Mercer.......................C-6 Butler Butler . .D-7 Mifflin Lewistown .................N-8 Cambria Ebensburg . .J-9 Monroe Stroudsburg...............X-7 Cameron Emporium . .L-4 Montgomery Norristown.................W-10 Carbon Jim Thorpe . .V-7 Montour Danville .....................R-7 Centre Bellefonte . .M-7 Northampton Easton.......................X-8 Chester West Chester . .V-11 Northumberland Sunbury.....................Q-7 Clarion Clarion . .F-6 Perry New Bloomfield .........P-9 Clearfield Clearfield . .K-6 Philadelphia Philadelphia...............X-11 Clinton Lock Haven . .O-6 Pike Milford .......................Y-5 Columbia Bloomsburg . .S-6 Potter Coudersport ..............L-3 Crawford Meadville . .C-4 Schuylkill Pottsville....................T-8 Cumberland Carlisle . .P-10 Snyder Middleburg ................P-7 Dauphin Harrisburg . .Q-9 Somerset Somerset...................G-10 Delaware Media . .W-11 Sullivan Laporte......................S-5 Elk Ridgway . .J-5 Susquehanna Montrose ...................U-3 Erie Erie . .C-2 Tioga Wellsboro ..................O-4 Fayette Uniontown . .E-11 Union Lewisburg..................Q-7 Forest Tionesta . .F-5 Venango Franklin .....................D-5 Franklin Chambersburg . .N-11 Warren Warren ......................G-3 Fulton McConnellsburg . .M-11 Washington Washington ...............C-10 Greene Waynesburg . -
Section I - Overview
EDUCATOR GUIDE Story Theme: History Retold Subject: The People’s Temple Discipline: Theatre SECTION I - OVERVIEW ......................................................................................................................2 SECTION II – CONTENT/CONTEXT ..................................................................................................3 SECTION III - RESOURCES ..................................................................................................................6 SECTION IV – VOCABULARY .........................................................................................................10 SECTION V – PEOPLES TEMPLE HISTORICAL TIMELINE .......................................................... 13 SECTION VI – ENGAGING WITH SPARK ....................................................................................143 SECTION VII – RELATED STANDARDS.......................................................................................... 19 Actors in The People’s Temple production at Berkeley Repertory Theatre work on the play in its early stages. Still image from SPARK story, 2005. SECTION I - OVERVIEW EPISODE THEME History Retold INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES Group oral discussion, review and analysis, SUBJECT including peer review and aesthetic valuing People’s Temple Project Teacher-guided instruction, including demonstration and guidance GRADE RANGES Hands-on individual projects in which students K–12 & Post-Secondary work independently Hands-on group projects in which students assist CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS -
Peoples Temple Miscellany, 1951-2013, MS 4126
http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt9j49s3fd No online items Finding aid to Peoples Temple miscellany, 1951-2013, MS 4126 Finding aid prepared by Frances Wratten Kaplan California Historical Society 2011 678 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94105 [email protected] URL: http://californiahistoricalsociety.org/ Finding aid to Peoples Temple MS 4126 1 miscellany, 1951-2013, MS 4126 Contributing Institution: California Historical Society Title: Peoples Temple miscellany Identifier/Call Number: MS 4126 Physical Description: 17.0 boxes Date (inclusive): 1951-2013 Collection is stored onsite. Language of Material: Collection materials are in English. Abstract: Peoples Temple miscellany consists of miscellaneous materials about Peoples Temple arranged by California Historical Society staff into a single, ongoing collection. Acquired at different times from a variety of donors, materials in the collection include correspondence, notes, scrapbooks, journals, clippings, publications, audio recordings, realia and television documentaries about Peoples Temple and Jonestown, its agricultural mission in Guyana. Access Collection is open for research. Publication Rights All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the Director of the Library and Archives, North Baker Research Library, California Historical Society, 678 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. Consent is given on behalf of the California Historical Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission from the copyright owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner. Restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted to research and educational purposes. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], Peoples Temple miscellany, MS 4126, California Historical Society Separated Materials Photographs have been removed and transferred to Photographs from Peoples Temple miscellany, 1966-1978, MSP 4126. -
Drinking the Kool-Aid: a Survivor Remembers Jim Jones
Drinking the Kool-Aid: A Survivor Remembers Jim Jones On November 18, 1978, Jim Jones and more than 900 members of his People's Temple committed mass suicide in the jungle of Guyana. Jones's followers are imagined as wide-eyed innocents, swallowing his outrageous teachings along with his cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. Teri Buford O'Shea remembers things quite differently. Teri Buford O'Shea was 19 years old when she joined the People's Temple in Redwood Valley, California. It was 1971, and O'Shea was homeless when a man pulled up alongside her in a van. He told her about the community where he lived -- a place, he said, where no one had to worry about food or housing. The leader was a visionary who was building a new future. O'Shea gladly took the ride. After all, she assumed, if she didn't like the People's Temple, she could always leave. Forty years later, O'Shea is just beginning to speak openly about her seven years with Jim Jones. Her memories of Jonestown are complex. Its inhabitants, she says, were warm people who worked hard to build a utopian community. Jones himself was passionately committed to civil rights -- during the 1960s, he helped integrate churches, hospitals, restaurants, and movie theaters, and he personally adopted several children of color. The majority of the followers who died with him were African- American, and one third were children. As O'Shea tells it, Jones's idealism was a large part of what made him so lethal. He tapped into the spirit of the late 1960s and 1970s, feeding on people's fears and promising to create a "rainbow family" based on true equality. -
Understanding Jonestown Whitney Fosu Junior Division Historical
1 Understanding Jonestown Whitney Fosu Junior Division Historical Paper Paper Length: 2,019 Words 2 The 1960s and 1970s were a bleak and uncertain time for many. During these decades, both the Civil Rights movement and the Women's Liberation movement were transpiring. Overall, this period was a difficult time for people everywhere. During the 1970s, Jim Jones' church, Peoples Temple, was a momentous accomplishment for welcoming all genders, races, and ages, yet this is where the triumph ends. In addition to his instability, and the members' mindless compliance, the criticisms and the political powers of outsiders ignited the tragedy of mass suicide. This remains a cautionary tale for everyday life, as it could very much occur again. Introduction into Jim Jones’ Life Jim Warren Jones was born on May 31, 1931, to James Thurman Jones and Lynetta Putnam Jones in Crete, Indiana. When he was born, his mother was working as a factory worker, while his dad was in a poor state of health due to his exposure to poisonous gasses during World War I. Growing up, he became more and more cognizant of the distinctions between his life and that of other children around him. It can be said that he was somewhat neglected during his youth as a result of his mother having to work all day leaving him with no one to care for him, and his father barely spending any time with him because of his involvement in the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group. His first encounter with religion came from his neighbor, Myrtle Kennedy, who cared for him during his childhood. -
`The Primary Emotions Were Exhaustion and Fear'
`The Primary Emotions THE WASHINGTON POST Tuesday, November 21,1978 A15 Were Exhaustion and Fear' Deborah Layton Blakey, 25, was a top punishment for defection was death. The aide of the Rev. Jim Jones until May, when fact that severe corporal punishment was she asked American consul officials to safe- frequently administered to temple members guard her departure from the Peoples Tem- gave the threats a frightening air of reality. ple jungle outpost in Guyana. In the follow. The Rev. Jones saw himself as the center ing June 15, 1978, affidavit given to her of a conspiracy. The identity of the con- lawyer for potential action, she detailed. spirators changed from day to day along conditions at the agricultural mission, say- with his erratic world vision. He induced ing Jones had become a "paranoid" ob- the fear in others that, through their contact sessed with "traitors." Spokesmen for the with him, they had become targets of the temple categorically denied her charges at conspiracy. He convinced black temple mem- the time. bers that if they did not follow him to The purpose of this affidavit is to call Guyana they would be put into concentra- tion camps and killed. White members were to the attention of the United States govern- instilled with the belief that their names ap- ment the existence of a situation which peared on a secret list of enemies of the threatens, the lives of United States citizens state that was kept by the CIA and that they living in Jonestown, Guyana. would be tracked down, tortured, impris- oned' and subsequently killed, if they did From August• 1971 until May 13, 1978, I not flee to Guyana. -
Jim Jones Jim Jones, by Name of James Warren Jones, (Born May 13, 1931, Crete, Near Lynn, Indiana, U.S.—Died November 18, 1978
Jim Jones Jim Jones, by name of James Warren Jones, (born May 13, 1931, Crete, near Lynn, Indiana, U.S.—died November 18, 1978, Jonestown, Guyana), American cult leader who promised his followers a utopia in the jungles of South America after proclaiming himself messiah of the Peoples Temple, a San Francisco-based evangelist group. He ultimately led his followers into a mass suicide, which left more than 900 dead and came to be known as the Jonestown Massacre (November 18, 1978). As a young child, Jones became a regular churchgoer, and, after graduating from Butler University, he decided to enter the ministry. In the 1950s and ’60s in Indianapolis, Indiana, Jones gained a reputation as a charismatic churchman, and he was a vocal proponent of racial integration, a position that ran afoul of some church elders. In 1955 he established the Wings of Deliverance, a Pentecostal church that eventually became known as the Peoples Temple. During this time he was noted for his work with the homeless, and in the early 1960s he served as director of Indianapolis’s Human Rights Commission. Fearing a nuclear war, Jones relocated his church to northern California in 1965, first settling near Ukiah and then in San Francisco in 1971. Following the move, Jones, who adopted the name “the Prophet,” apparently became obsessed with the exercise of power. Before long, he began to face various allegations, most notably that he was illegally diverting the income of cult members to his own use. Amid the mounting accusations, Jones and hundreds of his followers emigrated to Guyana and set up an agricultural commune called Jonestown (1977). -
The Black Panther Party Under Attack
UE DI IPV DIUTUED 25 r :~" NIS THt BUM rANIntn cents Black Community News Service VOL. III NO. 20 SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 6, 1969 PUBLISHED MINISTRY OF INFORMATION THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY BOX 2967, CUSTOM HOUSE WEEKLY SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94126 THE BLACK PANTHER, SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 6, 1969 PAGE 2 ENEMIES "WITHIN" ENEMIES Cultural nationalism is a trick ganization, this is also a part of Haiti, and that the oppressor is long rapping and standing on the barbituates to the young people in used by the black bourgeoisie and the plan of the continuation of very shrewd in that manner be corner and waving our hands and our community, they can survive in the children of the bourgeoisie. Nixon's program referred to as cause racism, black racism, cul swaying and trying to style, I this system by joining certain or They tell brothers to love every black capitalism. The cultural na tural nationalism, black capitalism don't mean that kind of education, ganizations that come under the po thing black and to have an undying tionalists take the position that all these things are just the in I mean the kind of education that litical standards of the system like love for blacks, while they jockey capitalism isn't bad, it was only bad gredients, just the kind of ingred has put America up against the the US organization, the N.A for positions, executive positions because blacks never had a chance ients that's necessary to create a wall the kind of education that was A.C.P., the Black Muslims all of on Richard Nixon's black capi to excel or that they never had a Haiti within the black communities exemplified by the two courageous these organizations that's not talist program.