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Jim Jones
1931–1978 · 47 years Tier II
An Indiana boy who held funerals for the animals he found dead
His father came home from the First World War with lungs ruined by a gas attack, and the pension did not cover a family. They were evicted in 1934 and relatives bought them a shack in Lynn, Indiana, with no plumbing and no electricity. The mother went out to work, the father went in and out of hospital, and the boy roamed the town, sometimes naked, fed by neighbor women who felt sorry for him. Myrtle Kennedy, a Nazarene pastor's wife, gave him a Bible. He attended most of the churches in Lynn and was baptized in several. He also visited the casket maker, and held funerals for the roadkill he collected, performing the service alone when no other child would come. He read Hitler, Stalin, Marx and Gandhi.
He graduated from Richmond High early and with honors in December 1948, worked as a hospital orderly, married a nurse-in-training named Marceline Baldwin on June 12, 1949, and started attending Communist Party meetings in Indianapolis at 20. He later described the calculation plainly: he wanted to know how to demonstrate his Marxism, and the answer was to infiltrate the church. He was a Methodist student pastor by 1952 and out by early 1954, the stated reason being theft of church funds. In 1955 he founded the congregation that became Peoples Temple, selling pet monkeys to pay for it, and then attached himself to the healing evangelist William Branham. Their June 1956 convention at the Cadle Tabernacle drew 11,000 and a prophecy from Branham over Jones. Temple attendance went to 1,000. It was fully integrated, and that was real.
The healings were staged. He had Temple member Irene Mason drugged, a cast put on her arm while she was unconscious, and was told she had fallen — then removed the cast in front of the congregation as a miracle. Others in his circle joined the prayer line and coughed up chicken gizzards as tumors. The politics were not staged, and that is the part that has never sat still. In September 1976, Assemblyman Willie Brown emceed a testimonial dinner for Jones attended by Governor Jerry Brown and Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally, and called him a combination of Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, Einstein and Mao. Harvey Milk spoke at Temple rallies. Walter Mondale met him on the campaign plane days before the 1976 election. Rosalynn Carter stood beside him at a Temple opening where he drew the louder applause.
On November 18, 1978, gunmen from Jonestown killed Congressman Leo Ryan and four others at the Port Kaituma airstrip, and Jones called the community to the pavilion. The tub of Flavor Aid was already mixed with cyanide and sedatives. The counts do not agree even inside a single reference work: 909 dead at Jonestown with 276 children, or more than 900 with 304, and 918 in all. Jones was found on the stage with a gunshot wound to the head, ruled a suicide, with pentobarbital in his body. He was cremated and scattered in the Atlantic. Over 400 of the dead lie in a mass grave at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, under a memorial raised in 2011.
Lifespan
Jim Jones's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
Peoples Temple
company
Founded in Indianapolis as Wings of Healing and renamed after the 1956 convention 1955 -
Cadle Tabernacle healing convention
other
June 11 to 15, 1956, shared with William Branham, 11,000 in attendance 1956 -
Peoples Temple in San Francisco
building
The headquarters from which he entered California politics 1972 -
Jonestown
building
The Guyana commune, built on his order and named for himself 1974 -
Apostolic Socialism
other
The doctrine he assembled from Branham, Father Divine and his own communism 1970 -
The Death Tape
other
A 45-minute recording of the mass poisoning, recovered by the FBI 1978
Life in brief
with age at each point- 1934 aged ~3 The family is evicted and moves to a shack in Lynn, Indiana No plumbing, no electricity. Neighbor women fed and clothed him.
- December 1948 aged 17 Graduates from Richmond High School early and with honors He was already working as an orderly at Reid Hospital.
- June 12, 1949 aged 18 Marries Marceline Baldwin
- 1955 aged ~24 Founds the congregation that becomes Peoples Temple Twenty members followed him out of the Laurel Street Tabernacle.
- June 1956 aged 25 Shares the Cadle Tabernacle pulpit with William Branham Branham prophesied over him. Temple attendance rose to about 1,000.
- 1965 aged ~34 Moves the Temple to California The headquarters ended up in San Francisco, and so did his politics.
- 1974 aged ~43 Orders the building of Jonestown in Guyana He called it a socialist paradise free of the United States government.
- November 18, 1978 aged 47 Gunmen kill Leo Ryan and four others at Port Kaituma Ryan had come to investigate reports that people were being held against their will.
- November 18, 1978 aged 47 The mass poisoning at Jonestown Over 900 dead, most of them at the central pavilion. Jones was shot in the head.
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