Jim Jones

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The Tragedy of the Century If you can remember anything about November 18, 178, you'll probably remember Jim Jones and the Jonestown suicides. Jones's childhood, the People's Temple, and the development of Jonestown may all be causes for his power hungry nature and the terrible tragedy that occurred over two decades ago. James Warren Jones was born May 1, 11 in Lynn, Indiana. He had no brothers or sisters that are mentioned. His father was believed to be a Ku Klux Klansman. His father later left his mother Lynetta to raise Jones on her own (Vankin, 50 Greatest Conspiracies 1). Jones was largely influenced by his mother's teachings. She was very skeptical of church-like religion and the idea of a sky god, but she did have a very strong belief in spirits. She made sure to instill this belief in her son. He was also very influenced by his Pentecostal neighbor. She taught Jones that religion was a highly emotional experience. This understanding of God and religion would have a lasting impact on Jones (Dickerson 1).

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Jones later attended Indiana University and Butler University, and was ordained in the Christian Church. He began to preach in several churches and became fascinated with having his own congregation (Robinson 1). In September of 154, Jones was invited to preach at the Laurel Street Tabernacle in Indianapolis. The Tabernacle was an Assembly of God Pentecostal church. Jones preached about desegregation of churches and due to the church board's inability to meet those requirements, Jones and several members of the Tabernacle left to form their own church (Dickerson 1-). On April 4, 155 the Wings of Deliverance was formed and was renamed The People's Temple to better describe their congregation. At this time The People's Temple was one of few interracial congregations in Indiana. Jones made the idea of racial integration one of his primary causes (Dickerson ). When people began to be suspicious of Jim Jones and The Temple's activities they moved the congregation of over 00 to Ukiah, California (Robinson ). Some major beliefs of the Temple while in California were Catharsis and faith healing. Catharsis is the belief of public punishment. When a child did something wrong they were not punished by their parents; they were punished by the whole congregation. The child would be placed on the stage and the congregation would vote on the child's innocence or guilt (Dickerson 8). Jones would sometimes take this form of torture to its limits, or even farther. One of the worst stories was what happened when Jones took children on a camping trip for survival training. "One youngster, 4 year-old Tommy Kice, was forced to eat when he wasn't hungry. When the little boy threw up, Jones forced him to eat his own vomit. He repeated the torture over and over as the child continued vomiting" (Kinsolving 1). More accounts included "a teenage girl being beaten in front of the congregation 75 times with a large wooden paddle, and a man being vomited and urinated on" (Kinsolving ). When the People's Temple moved to Guyana this practice was mostly abandoned. Another practice of the temple was faith healing and the ability to discern spirits or knowing the thoughts of others. "Jones later admitted that this was solely tactic of deception in order to establish faith among his followers. Many members of The People's Temple believed Jones had the power to heal them with just the touch of his hand" (Dickerson 8). Many people like Timothy Stoen believed Jones could raise people from the dead. Stoen wrote Lester Kinsolving a letter stating This wonderful group of people and their remarkable pastor Jim Jones…Jim has been the means by which more than 40 persons have literally been brought from the dead this year…I have seen Jim revive people stiff as a board, tongues hanging out, eyes set, skin graying, and all vital signs absent…Jim will go up to such a person and say something like 'I love you' or 'I need you' and immediately the vital signs reappear…Jim is very humble about his gift and does not preach it… (Kinsolving 6). At first when Jones moved The People's Temple to Ukiah, California, the community was very supportive. Brenda Ganatos donated clothes to her neighbors, the Cobb family, who migrated from Indiana with Jones, when she heard them discuss plans of building The People's Temple church (Kinsolving 1). Later in the 170s rumors began to spread about the Temple. People became afraid of the members. Some members who wanted to leave were receiving death threats (Kinsolving 1). Ganatos, who worked for the phone company, began spending -6 hours on the phone nightly gathering information about The People's Temple. By 171, she began having meetings in her home with around 15 people known as the Concerned Citizens. Ganatos and the Concerned Citizens tried to tell officials and newspapers what they had learned, but no one would investigate. One reporter, Lester Kinsolving, was willing to try and find out what was really going on in The People's Temple (Kinsolving 1). September 10, 17, Kinsolving and a photographer, Fran Ortiz, drove north of San Francisco to cover a People's Temple's meeting. When entering the sanctuary, Timothy Stoen, who was wearing a pulpit robe, interrogated Kinsolving. Stoen said he was an assistant pastor (who was not ordained) at The People's Temple and Assistant District Attorney of Mendocino County. Ortiz was told to leave his cameras outside or he could not enter. When he refused he was told to leave and wait outside (Kinsolving 6). An hour and a half after listening to the congregation tell praises of Jones, Kinsolving became bored. Ortiz suddenly approached and begged they leave. Once inside the car Ortiz informed Kinsolving he was able to photograph one of the many Temple guards, "'And Les,' Ortiz added, 'he was carrying a .57 magnum'" (Kinsolving 6). Lester Kinsolving worked for an Ukiah newspaper called the Examiner. When Kinsolving began writing articles stating how The People's Temple really was, the employees were ordered to throw away any letters that were criticizing The People's Temple. The employees of The Ukiah Daily Journal, another newspaper that reported Jones, were told to do the same. When Ganatos first spoke to Kinsolving on the phone, she told him the issues containing stories about The People's Temple hit the stands, The People's Temple's guards came and bought all the copies. She had to ask the liquor store to save her some papers (Kinsolving 1). "Jones had manipulated liberals and conservatives alike, thrown money around, and infiltrated every branch of county government" (Kinsolving 1). One good example of this is Timothy Stoen, the Assistant District Attorney (D.A.). Stoen was Jones's right hand man. When complaints of the Temple's activities were reported to the sheriff, they always ended up in Jones's hand via Stoen (Kinsolving 1). Then there was the case where a friend of Jones was running for San Francisco mayor and won by 4,000 votes. Barbagelata, the other candidate, suspected voter fraud. He told the D.A. Joseph Freitas, who had been elected along with Jones's friend, to investigate. Freitas appointed none other than Timothy Stoen to head the investigation. As a result of Stoen's research, very few convictions for voter fraud were made. After the massacre, state and federal agencies requested the documents. They were all missing (Kinsolving 1). In 177, the IRS began looking into The People's Temple. They accused the Temple of illegal practices and tax evasion due to the numerous elderly care homes that they maintained (Dickerson ). Jones began the process of moving his group to Jonestown, Guyana. He leased almost 4,000 acres for Jonestown from the government of Guyana (Robinson ). Jones began convincing the black members they would be put in concentration camps and killed, and telling the white members they were being put on a list of enemies by the CIA and would be tortured if they did not leave the U.S. and go to Guyana (Layton ). Life at Jonestown was supposed to be utopian, but in reality it was far from it. The members were forced to work long hours in the fields, have short lunches that were often inadequate, and get little sleep. The workday was from 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. Monday through Saturday. Instead of getting Sunday off for services, they worked from 7 A.M. to P.M. The members were allowed one hour for lunch. The food consisted of rice for breakfast, rice water soup for lunch, and rice and beans for dinner. Sundays the members received an egg and a cookie. Some very weak elders got an egg a day. The workday was shortened and the food improved when visitors came, because Jones wanted to put on a good front (Layton -4). As Jones began taking drugs, the people of the Temple got less sleep. Jones would often speak over a loud speaker at all hours of the night. "At times he appeared to be deluded by a paranoid vision of the world…However as the time went on, he appeared to become genuinely irrational" (Layton ). As he became more and more delusional he began to preach Translation. Translation is the belief that all of the people of the Temple would die together and be together in another after-life. The members of the Temple practiced mass suicide where they would pretend to drink poison and die (Robinson ). Jones would also hold white nights. Once a week, Jones would declare a white night where all of the people would be awakened by sirens. About 50 people armed with rifles would go from cabin to cabin making sure everyone was awake and participating. Jones would then hold a meeting telling everyone the jungle was full of people waiting to kill the population (Layton 5). One white night, Jones told the members that their situation had become hopeless and the only thing for them to do was proceed with the mass suicide they had been practicing. Everyone lined up and drank the liquid given to them that supposedly contained poison. When the time came that everyone should be dead, Jones announced the poison was not in the liquid and that was just a loyalty test. He then warned the people that the time was soon when they would have to commit suicide (Layton 5). During a different white night, Deborah Layton watched her former sister-in-law, Carolyn Layton, give two boys, John Victor Stoen and her son Kimo Prokes, sleeping pills. Carolyn told Deborah that Jones said everyone was going to die that night and Carolyn would have to shoot Kimo and John Victor. Carolyn then told Deborah she thought it would be better to shoot them while they slept. "Life at Jonestown was so miserable and the physical pain of exhaustion was so great that this event was not traumatic for me. I had become indifferent as to whether I lived or died" (Layton 5). Also Jones talked about having a place in history. He was obsessed. When he thought he might lose his place in history, he would grow depressed and say that all was lost (Layton 4). John V. Moore and his wife Barbara went to Jonestown six months before the suicides. Three months later Moore assured a journalist, Gordan Lindsey, that "Jim Jones is in touch with the pain and suffering of people…I think that anyone who can lead 1,00 people from their country to settle in a new country has got it together" (Kinsolving 1). In the late 170s, rumors of abused human rights circulated. Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown in November 178 to see for himself. The visit went well. When Ryan was leaving, early the morning of the 18th, about 16 members decided they wanted to leave Jonestown (Robinson ). While Ryan and the members were waiting at the Port Kaituma Airstrip, a group of temple guards drove up and started shooting. Ryan and four others were killed. Eleven others were wounded (Robinson ). Ryan's aide, Jackie Speir, was so scared about the trip to Jonestown she put her last will and testament inside her desk and made sure Ryan did the same (Kinsolving 1). After the tragedies occurred, a tape was found in the compound. It is believed to be the tape made during the suicides (Goodlett 1). Jones was talking about what was about to happen. He says during the tape that the Congressman was dead and it was time to begin (Goodlett ). Jones tries to convince everyone throughout the tape that the suicide they had been practicing was their only way out. One woman, Christine Miller, began arguing with him and telling him she didn't think it was a very good idea. Some people agreed with her and some were begging for the poison (Goodlett -7). The members committed suicide by drinking Kool-Aid spiked with cyanide (Vankin, 50 Greatest Conspiracies 1). In doses that would not normally kill a person, cyanide is detoxified by the body and causes no permanent after effects. When you are exposed to lethal doses you will probably die within 0 minutes (Cyanide 1). Cyanide prevents the oxidative processes of the cell, which means you suffocate. Your cells can no longer use oxygen. Three hundred ml of the salt or inhaling 100 mg per one million parts oxygen of cyanide is usually fatal (Cyanide 1). The body count was 68 adults and 76 children (Robinson 1). Within two days of the suicide, the count jumped by almost 400, which lead people to believe some escapees were hunted down and killed. A coroner from Guyana, Leslie Mootoo, said that as many as 700 of the people appeared to have been forcibly killed and not suicides at all (Vankin, 70 Greatest Conspiracies 4). There are many possible reasons for what happened. One of them may be that Jones was, in his eyes, powerful. He had followers. Over 00 people followed him to Guyana and did what he asked. That gave him an ego. He also had supporters. He had enough money that he could buy anyone he wanted. The majority of the California government was in the palm of Jones's hand. Another thing that made him feel powerful was he had succeeded in everything he had done so far. People followed him from Indiana to California, then to Guyana. People believed what he said without questioning him. Jones felt he had total control. Looking at it now, it is possible that he did. Another more widely accepted theory is that the CIA was involved. In 180, Joseph Holsinger, who'd already discovered a U.S. embassy worker, Richard Dwyer's, presence at Jonestown, received a paper form a professor at U.C. Berkeley. Called "The Penal Colony," the paper detailed how the CIA's mind control program MK-ULTRA was not stopped in 17, as the CIA had told Congress. The paper reported the program had been moved out of hospitals and prisons and into religious cults like Jonestown (Vankin, 70 Greatest Conspiracies ). Another point that supports this theory is there are almost 5,000 pages of documents the government refuses to declassify. George Berdes, the chief consultant to the House Foreign Affairs Committee at the time, says the documents were classified so they could insure privacy to the sources. He believes enough time has passed and they should be declassified now (Taylor ). Jim Jones did some very disturbing things in his lifetime and there will always be people like Jessie Jackson who say things like "…I hope that all of the good he did will not be discounted because of that tremendous tragedy" (Kinsolving 5). There is nothing we can do about that except know our own beliefs and stick to them. Whether he was crazy, working for the CIA, or just "that way" from birth, there were reasons behind the Jonestown tragedy that we may never know. Maybe with a little insight and knowledge of what happened we will be able to stop these kinds of things from happening again. "Cyanide". Encyclopedia Britannica. 1. March 5, 001. http//www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=8817&tocid=0.Dickerson, Tobin. "Special Report". Peoples Temple (Jonestown). March 8, 001. 1. University of Virginia. March 1, 001. http//religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/Jonestwn.html.Goodlett, Carlton, et al. Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Rebecca Moore. February 16, 001. All pages. Department of Religious Studies. March , 001. http//www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~remoore/jonestown/index.html.Kinsolving, Kathleen and Tom Kinsolving. "Madman in Our Midst Jim Jones and the California Coverup". Resource Center for Freedom of Mind. Steven Hassan. February 4, 001. 7. March 5, 001. http//www.freedomofmind.com/groups/temple/madman.htm.Layton, Deborah. Seductive Poison. February 8, 001. All pages. March , 001. http//www.deborahlayton.com.Robinson, B.A.. "The People's Temple (Jim Jones)". Religious Tolerance. January 4, 000. 5. March 1, 001. http//religioustolerance.org/dc_jones.htm.Taylor, Michael, et al. "Most Peoples Temple Documents Still Sealed". San Francisco Chronicle. Friday, November 1, 18. March 7, 001. . March 7, 001. http//www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/18/11/1/MN1071.DTL.Vankin, Jonathan and John Whalen. "The Jonestown Massacre CIA Mind Control Run Amok". 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time. March 1, 001. 6. March 1, 001. http//www.conspire.com/jones.html.Vankin, Jonathan and John Whalen. "The Jonestown Massacre". 50 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time. Cult Awareness & Information Centre. February 4, 001. 1. March 5, 001. http//www.caic.org.au/biblebase/jonesmassacre.htm. Please note that this sample paper on Jim Jones is for your review only. In order to eliminate any of the plagiarism issues, it is highly recommended that you do not use it for you own writing purposes. In case you experience difficulties with writing a well structured and accurately composed paper on Jim Jones, we are here to assist you. Your persuasive essay on Jim Jones will be written from scratch, so you do not have to worry about its originality.

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