Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple Page #2

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was Jim Joness ad

that he had some monkeys to sell.

So it was through that

that she met Jim Jones,

and came back saying that

he had invited her to church

this next Sunday.

It didnt make no difference

what color you were.

It was everybody welcome there

in that church

and he made it very plain

from the platform.

We had some people

that disagreed with Jimmy.

They got up in the audience

and they said they disagreed with him.

They did not like this

integration part of the services.

We did ask people to leave the church

one night because of that.

I was the first Negro child

adopted by a Caucasian family

in the state of Indiana.

Jim and Marceline actually

went to adopt a Caucasian child.

The story goes that

I was crying real loud

and it drew attention

for Marceline to come over,

and once she picked me up,

I stopped crying.

My family was a template

of a rainbow family.

We had an African American,

we had two American Asian

and we had his

natural son, homemade.

Jim was breaking new ground

in race relations

at a time when the ground was

still pretty hard against that.

Jim Jones was hated

and despised by some people,

particularly

in the white community.

There had been pressures on him

to leave Indianapolis.

He thought that Indianapolis was

too racist of a place for him to be,

and he wanted to

take his people out.

California is perceived to be

a very progressive state.

This would be the place to

implement the dream of racial equality.

Not Indianapolis,

which seems hopeless,

but California, which

seems to be the Promised Land.

He chose Ukiah

in northern California,

about 90 miles north

of San Francisco,

because there was an article

inEsquire Magazinethat said that

Ukiah was one of the nine places

in the world that

in the event of

thermonuclear attack,

people would survive.

I told Edith, If you follow Jimmy

to California, youre crazy.

So what did Jimmy do,

but took her to a psychiatrist

and sent me a certified letter

that she is of sound mind,

and she is not crazy.

I was there the afternoon

that Edith drove away.

I didnt know

Id never see her again.

The move to California

was really fun.

There were about twelve to fifteen cars

driving across United States

and making that journey

to a place that none of us knew,

you know, none of us

could even imagine.

We were going to California,

our new world.

When I saw Redwood Valley,

I couldnt believe my eyes

because it was like a paradise.

It was rural. It was green.

There were grape vines everywhere,

and I fell in love.

I said "This is got to be

a perfect way to live."

We started with about

a hundred and forty-one people

and from that, weve grown

to a very thriving congregation.

We have about every level of society,

all socio-economic income strata,

professional down to the ordinary

field worker, field laborer.

Really, its beautiful to see that

all these divisions have been broken down...

not only race, but any differences

of economic position.

The focus of Jims message

was taken from the Bible,

where Jesus in his earliest days

told people to sell all things

and have all things in common.

Jesus Christ had the most revolutionary

teachings to be said, in the sense that

he said to feed the hungry,

clothe the naked,

take in the stranger,

administer to those who are

widows and afflicted in their suffering.

And we feel that no one really

tried Christianity too effectively

in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The membership

increased substantially

as he procured

more and more Greyhound buses

and fixed them up,

and every summer

he began this cross-country tour.

The purpose of the bus trips

was to spread Jims beliefs

about socialism and the world,

and how we can live a better life

and about an integrated lifestyle.

But behind that, I think it was to

gather more members for the Temple.

I decided not to go to Vietnam,

and I was just at the point of

what am I going to do with myself?

I heard Jim Jones was

going to be coming to Philadelphia,

and coming to

Benjamin Franklin High School.

And I went Wednesday night

and I listened to him,

and I was impressed by

how it was such an interracial group

and people were really happy.

You got nothing to lose.

Who else is going to stand

and look you in the face and say,

Come and Ill give you a job.

Come and Ill give you a home.

Come and Ill give you a bed?

But Ive got nothing but a pension.

Go and leave your pension behind,

who else will tell you that?

Wholl tell you,

Ill put you on that bus tomorrow?

I heard Jim Jones talking

about equality among races,

what its like living in California,

in the Redwood Valley,

the good works that theyre doing.

Things that, like,

I wanted to get involved with,

but didnt even know

where to make an entre.

And all of a sudden,

the answer was there.

Somebody is gonna get on the

freedom train in Philadelphia!

He was there for three evenings,

and the third evening

I went off on the bus

and came to California.

When I joined Peoples Temple

in the spring of 1966,

there were exactly

eighty-one members.

Five years later,

an extended family of eighty people

had become

an organization of thousands.

Peoples Temple

really was a black church.

It was led by a white minister,

but in terms of the worship service,

commitment to the social gospel,

its membership,

it functioned completely

like a black church.

He talked black.

He really understood it.

He understood how it was

to be treated differently.

And thats from his roots

coming out of Lynn.

When people heard Jim,

they didnt look upon him

as being a white preacher, you know.

People didnt look at Jim

as being white. He was not white.

He was just their preacher.

You going to go to Texas with me

when I have that campaign?

I was just wondering whether

I could go or not. I would like to go.

Why of course youd go,

you went to Mexico with me.

As older people joined,

it took a year or so

and hed convince the people that

he was doing so much in the community

and so why not rather than

just tithe your twenty percent,

why not sell your home,

give the money to the church?

And that is what people began to do.

Now in this church,

what have we done in a short time?

We have four senior citizens homes

that are the most innovating,

the most beautiful you want to see.

They had their own rooms,

they had every need taken care of,

they had their food provided.

They were well looked after.

Now my home is stone block and

theres not a piece of new furniture in it.

But our senior citizen homes,

theyre elegant. And thats beautiful.

They were giving their lifes money

and savings to the church,

but in exchange,

the church was agreeing

to take care of them in the community,

not just in a nursing home.

Well it got to the point where

there were so many duties in the Temple

that some people

had to become full time.

So when you were full-time Temple,

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