Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple

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Nobody joins a cult.

Nobody joins something

they think is going to hurt them.

You join a religious organization,

you join a political movement,

and you join with people

that you really like.

I think in everything

that I tell you about Jim Jones,

there is going to be a paradox.

Having this vision

to change the world,

but having this

whole undercurrent of dysfunction

that was underneath that vision.

Some people see

a great deal of God in my body.

They see Christ in me, a hope of glory.

He said, If you see me as your friend,

Ill be your friend.

As you see me as your father,

Ill be your father.

He said, If you see me as your God,

Ill be your God.

Jim Jones talked about

going to the Promised Land

and then, pretty soon, we were seeing

film footage of Jonestown.

Rice, black-eyed peas, Kool-Aid.

We all wanted to go.

I wanted to go.

Peoples Temple truly had the potential

to be something big

and powerful and great,

and yet for whatever reason,

Jim took the other road.

On the night of the 17th,

it was still a vibrant community.

I would never have imagined that

24 hours later, they would all be dead.

Die with a degree of dignity!

Dont lay down with tears and agony!

Its nothing to death.

Its just stepping over into another plane.

Dont, dont be this way.

I vividly remember the first time

that I met Jim Jones.

My sister Carolyn

had invited my parents

and my younger sister and I

to visit her in Potter Valley.

We came and there was

this strange man in her house,

and her husband wasnt there.

Annie and I were sent out

to go on a walk.

When we came back,

something had happened.

Something terrible had happened,

because everyone had red eyes

except for Jim Jones.

We didnt really get the story

until we were in the car going home.

He was carrying on an adulterous

relationship with my sister.

And because his wife

couldnt relate to him as a wife...

that Carolyn

had taken over that role.

Everything was plausible,

except in retrospect,

the whole thing seems

absolutely bizarre.

The first time

I visited Peoples Temple,

I drove at the urging of a friend,

a co-worker, to Redwood Valley.

We all got suited down,

neck-tied and everything.

You know, and we were sharp.

As soon as I walked into

the San Francisco temple, I was home.

I was one of those kind of guys...

that I used drugs.

I was an alcoholic.

I drunk alcohol and stuff like that.

And... and all these people

that were like my age,

they were clean.

Before I came here,

I was takingLSD, marijuana,

every type of dope

you can imagine.

Without our pastor, Jim Jones,

to teach me the right way,

I would not be in college right now.

And for me, that was like,

Wow, man. I liked that.

Thank you very much, thank you.

There was an interracial group.

The choir was interracial

and they used to sing this song:

Never heard a man

speak like this man before.

Never heard a man

speak like this man before.

All the days of my life,

ever since I been born,

I never heard a man

speak like this man before.

After they sang one or two songs,

the whole place was lit up.

The Peoples Temple services,

they had life, they had soul,

they had power.

We were alive in those services.

I would be up jumping in the balcony

and clapping my hands.

If you came in as a stranger

and didnt know anything about the politics,

you were thinking you were entering

an old-time religion service.

By the time Jones did come out

to do his speaking,

the table had already been set.

I represent divine principle,

total equality,

a society where people own

all things in common.

Where there is no rich or poor.

Where there are no races.

Wherever there is people struggling

for justice and righteousness,

there I am.

And there I am involved.

What he spoke about were

things that were in our hearts.

The government was not

taking care of the people.

There were too many poor people

out there. There were poor children.

The world is like a human family.

The little child may not be able to go

and draw a paycheck,

but the father

guarantees the childcare.

The grandmother

may not be able to work anymore,

but the father and mother

guarantees her the right to live.

Every single person felt

that they had a purpose there

and that they were

exceptionally special.

And that is how he brought

so many young college kids in,

so many older black women in,

so many people from diverse backgrounds

who realized that there was

something bigger than themselves

that they needed to be involved in...

and that Jim Jones offered that.

I went home, told mom, You know what,

this is the right church for me.

It was the next week that I became

a member of Peoples Temple.

Theres a little town in Indiana.

The moment I think of it

a great deal of pain comes.

As a child I was undoubtedly

one of the poor in the community,

never accepted.

Born as it were

on the wrong side of the tracks.

I grew up with Jimmy Jones.

We started first grade together.

My brothers used to

go over to Jimmys house

and hung around his barn,

which was where he played.

From the time I was five years old,

I thought Jimmy was a really weird kid,

there was something not quite right.

He was obsessed with religion;

he was obsessed with death.

My brothers came back

with stories of him

conducting funerals

for small animals that had died.

A friend of mine told me that

he saw Jimmy kill a cat with a knife.

Well having a funeral for it

was a little strange,

killing the animal was very strange.

Jimmys father did not work,

did not have a job, and was a drunk.

Jims mother had to work

in order to support the family.

And he was kind of

left to his own devices.

Kind of the kid who ran wild

in the street, you know what I mean?

Listen, he was in a

dysfunctional family.

We got a nice name for it now.

But when you live

in a dysfunctional family,

you think its normal.

Feeling as an outcast,

Id early developed a sensitivity

for the problems of blacks.

I brought the only black

young man in the town home

and my dad said that

he could not come in

and I said, Then I shant,

and I did not see my dad for many years.

In Lynn, Jim Jones looked for community

and couldnt find community,

in Lynn as a town... which had a

population of what, a thousand people?

But he did find community

in the Pentecostal Church.

He saw that they were

a surrogate home.

He saw that the preachers were like

father figures to their congregations.

And that role represented power

over the lives of your congregation.

Jim Jones started out

on the revival preaching circuit,

learning the ropes of

being a preacher.

And once he started doing that,

it became clear that

he could get a following.

The first time I met Jim Jones

was Easter 1953.

My mother-in-law, Edith Cordell,

had a monkey and it hung itself

and she wanted to

replace the monkey.

So she looked in theIndianapolis Star,

and in thatIndianapolis Star

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