Jim Jones

Jim Jones (born May 13, 1931, Crete, near Lynn, Indiana, U.S.—died November 18, 1978, Jonestown, Guyana) was an 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 who claimed to have psychic powers such as the ability to foretell the future and miraculously heal those who were sick. 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). As ruler of the sect, Jones confiscated passports and millions of dollars and manipulated his followers with threats of blackmail, beatings, and probable death. He also staged bizarre rehearsals for a ritual mass suicide.

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On November 14, 1978, U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan of California arrived in Guyana with a group of reporters and relatives of cultists to conduct an unofficial investigation of alleged abuses. Four days later, as Ryan’s party and 14 defectors from the cult prepared to leave from an airstrip near Jonestown, Jones ordered the group assassinated. However, only Ryan and four others (including three reporters) were killed. Fearing that those who had escaped might bring in authorities, Jones activated his suicide plan. On November 18 he commanded his followers to drink cyanide-adulterated punch, an order that the vast majority of them passively and inexplicably obeyed. Jones himself died of a gunshot wound in the head, possibly self-inflicted. Guyanese troops reached Jonestown the next day, and the death toll of cultists was eventually placed at 913, including 304 who were under the age of 18. (Some death tolls include the five people killed at the airstrip, bringing the total number of deaths to 918).