Jim Jones
James Warren Jones was an American cult leader, preacher, and mass murderer who founded and led the Peoples Temple between 1955 and 1978. Jones and the members of his inner circle planned and orchestrated a mass murder–suicide that resulted in the deaths of over 900 people including 304 children, which he described as "revolutionary suicide", a term coined by Huey P. Newton, in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978, including the assassination of U.S. congressman Leo Ryan. Jonestown had a defining influence on society's perception of cults.
As a child, Jones developed an affinity for Pentecostalism and a desire to preach. He was ordained as a Christian minister in the Independent Assemblies of God, attracting his first group of followers while participating in the Pentecostal Latter Rain movement and the Healing Revival during the 1950s. Jones's initial popularity arose from his joint campaign appearances with the movement's prominent leaders William Branham and Joseph Mattsson-Boze, and their endorsement of his ministry. Jones founded the organization that became the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis in 1955. In 1956, he began to be influenced by Father Divine and the Peace Mission movement. Jones distinguished himself through civil rights activism, founding the Temple as a fully integrated congregation. In 1964, he joined and was ordained a minister by the Disciples of Christ; his attraction to the Disciples was largely due to the autonomy and tolerance they granted to differing views within their denomination.
In 1965, Jones moved the Temple to California. The group established its headquarters in San Francisco, where he became heavily involved in political and charitable activity throughout the 1970s. Jones developed connections with prominent California politicians and was appointed as chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission in 1975. Beginning in the late 1960s, reports of abuse began to surface as Jones became increasingly vocal in his rejection of traditional Christianity and began promoting a form of anti-capitalism that he called "Apostolic Socialism" and making claims of his own divinity. Jones became progressively more controlling of his followers in Peoples Temple, which had over 3,000 members at its peak. His followers engaged in a communal lifestyle in which many turned over all their income and property to Jones and Peoples Temple who directed all aspects of community life.
Following a period of negative publicity and reports of abuse at Peoples Temple, Jones ordered the construction of the Jonestown commune in Guyana in 1974 and convinced or compelled many of his followers to live there with him. He claimed that he was constructing a socialist paradise free from the oppression of the United States government. By 1978, reports surfaced of human rights abuses and accusations that people were being held in Jonestown against their will. U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led a delegation to the commune in November of that year to investigate these reports. While boarding a return flight with some former Temple members who wished to leave, Ryan and four others were murdered by gunmen from Jonestown. Jones then ordered a mass murder-suicide that claimed the lives of 912 commune members; most of the members died by drinking Flavor Aid laced with cyanide, and those who resisted were forcefully injected with cyanide.
Early life
Jim Jones was born on May 13, 1931, in the rural community of Crete, Indiana to James Thurman Jones and Lynetta Putnam. Jones was of Irish and Welsh descent; he and his mother both claimed to also have some Cherokee ancestry, but there is no evidence of this. Jones' father was a disabled World War I veteran who suffered from severe breathing difficulties due to injuries which he sustained in a chemical weapons attack. He tried to augment his income by occasionally working on neighborhood road repair projects because the military pension that he earned was insufficient to support his family.His father's illness led to financial difficulties, which in turn resulted in intense marital problems between Jones' parents. In 1934, during the Great Depression, the Jones family was evicted from their home for failure to make mortgage payments. Their relatives purchased a shack for them to live in at the nearby town of Lynn. The new home where Jones grew up lacked plumbing and electricity. In Lynn, the family attempted to earn an income through farming, but again met with failure when his father's health further deteriorated. The family often lacked adequate food and relied on financial support from their extended family. They sometimes resorted to foraging in the nearby forest and fields to supplement their diet.
According to multiple Jones biographers, his mother had "no natural maternal instincts" and she frequently neglected her son. When Jones started to attend school, his extended family threatened to cut off their financial assistance unless his mother got a job, forcing her to work outside her home. Meanwhile, Jones' father was hospitalized multiple times due to his illness. As a result, Jones' parents were frequently absent during his childhood. His aunts and uncles lived close by and gave him some supervision, but Jones often wandered the streets of the town, sometimes naked. Jones was cared for by the female residents of Lynn, and they frequently gave him food, clothing, and gifts.
Early religious and political influences
Myrtle Kennedy, the wife of the Nazarene Church's pastor, developed a special attachment to Jones. She gave Jones a Bible and encouraged him to study it, teaching him to follow the holiness code of the Nazarene Church. As Jones grew older, he attended services at most of the churches in Lynn, often going to multiple churches each week, and he was baptized in several of them. Jones developed a desire to become a preacher as a child and he began to practice preaching in private. His mother claimed that she was disturbed when she caught him imitating the pastor of the local Apostolic Pentecostal Church and she unsuccessfully attempted to prevent him from attending the church's services.Although they had sympathy for Jones because of his poor circumstances, his neighbors reported that he was an unusual child who was obsessed with religion and death. Jones regularly visited a casket manufacturer in Lynn and held mock funerals for roadkill that he collected. One neighbor of the Jones family even stated that Jones killed a cat with a knife for one of these funerals. When he could not get any children to attend his funerals, he would perform the services alone. Jones claimed to have unique abilities, such as the capacity to fly. He once leaped off a building's roof to demonstrate his abilities to others, but he fell and broke his arm. He nonetheless persisted in saying he had exceptional abilities despite the fall. At times, he would put other children into life-threatening situations and tell them he was guided by the Angel of Death. Jones allegedly committed countless sacrilegious pranks in the churches he attended as a boy, according to claims he made in adult life. He claimed that he had stolen the Pentecostal minister's Bible and had covered Acts 2:38 with cow manure. He also asserted that he substituted a cup of his urine for the holy water once at a Catholic church.
One Jones biographer suggested that he developed his unusual interests because he found it difficult to make friends. Although his strange religious practices stood out the most to his neighbors, they reported that he misbehaved more seriously. He frequently stole candy from merchants in the town; his mother was required to pay for his thefts. Jones regularly used offensive profanity, commonly greeting his friends and neighbors by saying, "Good morning, you son of a bitch" or "Hello, you dirty bastard", similar to his mother Lynetta, who frequently swore in public and found amusement in people being offended at a woman cursing. Jones's mother usually beat him with a leather belt to punish his misbehavior.
Jones also developed an intense interest in social doctrines. He became a voracious reader who studied Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi. Jones would tell his wife that Mao Zedong was his hero. He spent hours in the community library, and he brought books home so he could read them in the evenings. Although he studied different political systems, Jones did not espouse any radical political views in his youth, but as World War II started, Jones developed an intense interest in the Nazi Party. He was fascinated by their pomp, their cohesion, and Hitler's total power. The members of his neighborhood found it disconcerting that he extolled Nazi Germany. Jones acted as a dictator over the other kids, ordering them to goosestep together and beating those who disobeyed. One childhood friend recalled Jones shouting "Heil Hitler!" and giving the Nazi salute to German prisoners of war who were traveling to a detention facility. Commenting on his childhood, Jones stated: Tim Reiterman, a journalist and biographer of Jones, wrote that Jones's attraction to religion was strongly influenced by his desire for a family. Jones went to see the Kennedy family in 1942 when they spent the summer in Richmond, Indiana. They took part in services four times a week while attending a summer religious convention at a nearby Pentecostal church. When Jones returned to Lynn in the fall, he upset his neighborhood by explaining sexual reproduction in detail to young children. Jones's mother was urged to control his behavior by many individuals in Lynn, but she refused. Many parents decided to keep their kids away from Jones as a result of the issue. He had established himself as an outcast among his friends by the time he started high school and was progressively despised by the locals.
Education and marriage
In high school, Jones continued to stand out from his peers. Jones went by the nickname "Jimmy" during his youth, and almost always carried his Bible with him. Jones was a good student who enjoyed debating with his teachers. He also had the habit of refusing to respond to anyone who spoke to him first and only engaged in conversations when he started them. In contrast to his peers, Jones was known to dress in his Sunday church clothes every day of the week. His religious views alienated him from other young people. He frequently confronted them for drinking beer, smoking, and dancing. At times, he would even interrupt other young people's events and insist that they read the Bible with him.Jones did not enjoy participating in sports because he detested losing, so he coached teams for younger children instead. Jones was disturbed by the treatment of the African Americans who were in attendance at a baseball game he attended in Richmond, Indiana. The events at that baseball game brought discrimination against African Americans to Jones's attention and influenced his strong aversion to racism. Jones's father belonged to the Indiana branch of the Ku Klux Klan, which enjoyed considerable support in Indiana during the Great Depression. Jones described how he and his father had a disagreement about race and added that they had not spoken for "many, many years" as a result of his father's forbidding one of Jones's black friends from entering his home.
Jones's parents separated in 1945 and they eventually divorced. Jones moved to Richmond, Indiana with his mother, where he graduated from Richmond High School in December 1948 early and with honors. Jones and his mother lost the financial support of their relatives following the divorce. To support himself, Jones began working as an orderly at Richmond's Reid Hospital in 1946. Jones was well-regarded by the senior management, but staff members later recalled that Jones exhibited disturbing behavior towards some patients and co-workers. Jones began dating a nurse-in-training named Marceline Mae Baldwin while he was working at Reid Hospital.
Jones moved to Bloomington, Indiana in November 1948, where he attended Indiana University Bloomington with the intention of becoming a doctor, but changed his mind shortly thereafter. During his time at University, Jones was impressed by a speech that Eleanor Roosevelt delivered about the plight of African-Americans, and he began to espouse support for communism and other radical political views for the first time.
Jones and Baldwin continued their relationship while he attended college, and the couple married on June 12, 1949. Their first home was in Bloomington, where Marceline worked in a nearby hospital while Jones attended college. Marceline was Methodist, and she and Jones immediately fell into arguments about church. Jones's strong opposition to the Methodist church's racial segregationist practices was an early strain on their marriage, and throughout the duration of their relationship, Jones frequently emotionally and psychologically abused Marceline. Jones insisted on attending Bloomington's Full Gospel Tabernacle, but eventually compromised and began attending a local Methodist church on most Sunday mornings. Despite attending churches every week, Jones privately pressed his wife to accept atheism.
Through the years, Jones's marriage was affected by his insecurity. He often felt the need to test Marceline's love and loyalty, and at times he used sadistic methods to do so. One recurring tactic he used was to tell her that one of her close friends or family members had suddenly died, and then comfort her over the loss, before finally admitting to her the story was untrue.
After attending Indiana University for two years, the couple relocated to Indianapolis in 1951. Jones took night classes at Butler University to continue his education, finally earning a degree in secondary education in 1961. In 1951, the 20-year-old Jones began attending gatherings of the Communist Party USA in Indianapolis. Jones and his family faced harassment from government authorities for their affiliation with the Communist Party during 1952. Jones later asserted that in one event, his mother was harassed by FBI agents in front of her co-workers because she had attended a communist meeting with her son. Jones became frustrated with the persecution of communists in the U.S. Reflecting back on his participation in the Communist Party, Jones said that he asked himself, "How can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church."