From the San Francisco Chronicle:
‘Revolutionary suicide’
Three decades ago on Nov. 19, the Guyanese government dispatched troops to Jonestown, the agricultural settlement Jones and his followers had established in South America’s northeast corner. There they found the catastrophic result of Jones’ suicide order: More than 900 bodies lay scattered on the ground. About a third of the dead were under 18.
Jones had ordered his followers to kill themselves after Rep. Leo Ryan, D-San Mateo, visited the compound on a fact-finding trip and left with a group of Temple members who wanted to defect. For Jones, those defections were shattering. A Temple security squad followed Ryan’s group and fired on them, killing Ryan and four others.
When people recall Jonestown, they usually remember the suicides. They know less about the man. Jones was born in 1931 into a poor family in Lynn, Ind. He was the son of a disabled World War I veteran. By the 1950s he had become a pastor in Indianapolis, and in 1956, he opened his own church, Peoples Temple.
In the mid-1960s, Jones and more than 100 followers moved to Redwood Valley, about 125 miles north of San Francisco. In his sermons, Jones preached social justice and promised that he – “Dad” – would care for his people.
In 1972, Jones moved his church to an auditorium at Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard in San Francisco. The city he settled in was in transition.
Manufacturing plants were moving out of town. Waves of Asian and Latino immigrants, along with gays and lesbians, were transforming areas that had been home to the working-class Irish and Italians. In the Fillmore District, affluent whites were buying homes that African Americans had owned or rented. In this city of the ’70s, Jones’ church attracted hundreds of new members.
It was an only-in-San Francisco phenomenon, said U.S. Attorney Joe Russoniello, who later successfully prosecuted Temple follower Larry Layton on conspiracy charges in connection with Ryan’s murder. “I don’t know of any other place in the country where Jones could have gone as far as he did,” Russoniello said.
In his church, Jones gave sermons advocating liberal ideals – pushing integration, attacking sexism, urging care for the poor. But behind the scenes, there was another, darker world: Jones, who was married, had many affairs with female and male followers and bragged about his conquests. He staged healing “miracles” by touching the ill and injured. And when church members committed relatively inconsequential misdeeds, such as not listening closely enough to Jones’ sermons, there were public beatings with a belt or paddle.
In public, Jones formed close ties with leaders who valued his ability to turn out hundreds of volunteers during election campaigns. Much that he did looked praiseworthy. His congregation included many poor blacks, and he offered social programs to help them.
Many credited Jones’ followers with helping to elect Moscone, who edged out his opponent, Realtor John Barbagelata, by about 4,200 votes in the 1975 mayor’s race. Moscone named Jones to the Housing Authority Commission, and District Attorney Joe Freitas hired a Jones follower, Tim Stoen, as a deputy prosecutor.
In September 1976, Jones gave a testimonial dinner for himself at the church. Seated at the head table with Jones were Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally, Assemblyman Willie Brown, Mayor Moscone, District Attorney Freitas and others.
Jones’ alliance with the city’s Democratic leaders was “a quid pro quo,” said Agar Jaicks, who was chair of the San Francisco County Democratic Central Committee at the time. “Jones wanted power, and he provided Democratic candidates with volunteers to help win elections.”
Jaicks said that he eventually grew “very disturbed” by Jones’ mix of “Marxism, faith healing and bodyguards with guns.” But he said Jones was also seen by many “as propping up African Americans, giving them opportunities. No one wanted to see the negatives. No one wanted to see this as a cult.”
Jones also curried favor with the media. In 1977, The Chronicle’s Marshall Kilduff wanted to write a story about Jones, but City Editor Steve Gavin rejected the idea. With freelance reporter Phil Tracy, Kilduff began working on an article about Jones for New West magazine. One day he went to attend a Temple service. Gavin was sitting in the front row.
The New West article began to turn public opinion against Jones: It detailed defectors’ accounts of beatings and fake cancer healings and told how Temple members had given Peoples Temple the deeds to their homes. A barrage of negative news coverage followed.
Fleeing the publicity, Jones moved with hundreds of followers to Guyana, a former British colony in South America. The Jonestown settlement included cottages, dorms and a vegetable garden. Some followers found it a place of peace. But defectors said there were armed guards, public beatings and mass suicide drills.
The ghastly finale came the following year. Rep. Ryan had heard from families worried about relatives living at Jonestown. He agreed to visit Jonestown. He also pledged that if he found any people who wanted to flee, he would bring them out with him.
With several reporters, Ryan flew to Guyana on Nov. 14, 1978.
During Ryan’s visit, dozens of Temple members pleaded to leave with him. Jones became extremely agitated. On the second day of Ryan’s visit to the settlement, a Temple follower attacked Ryan and had to be restrained. Ryan, his group and some defectors left and gathered on an airport runway about six miles away. Temple guards arrived and fired on them. Five, including Ryan and San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson, were slain; 10 others, including Ryan aide Jackie Speier, Chronicle reporter Ron Javers and San Francisco Examiner reporter Tim Reiterman, were wounded.
Back at Jonestown, Jones was speaking to his followers, instructing them to kill themselves. Word spread that Ryan had been killed. “The congressman is dead,” Jones said, according to a tape of the sermon. Referring to cyanide, he said: “Please give us some medication. … There’s no convulsions.” On the tape, babies are heard crying. Jones’ last words were: “We committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.”
The next day arriving soldiers identified the 47-year-old Jones’ body. He and a top aide had died from bullet wounds. More than 900 others succumbed after drinking punch dosed with cyanide.
Today there is no unanimity over the lessons of Jonestown.
Some, like retired Judge Quentin Kopp, who was a supervisor at the time, view Jonestown as “a horrifying blip” in the city’s history. Others say it is a story of good intentions gone awry.
People who joined Peoples Temple could not see at the start how it would end, says Fielding McGehee of the Jonestown Institute at San Diego State University, which was established to document the tragedy and its aftermath.
“People did not join Peoples Temple so they could go down to a jungle and drink cyanide and die,” said McGehee, whose wife, institute co-founder Rebecca Moore, lost two sisters and a nephew at Jonestown. “They joined, wanting to make a better world, but in order to fulfill their dreams they made compromises and mistakes along the way that they shouldn’t have.”
The Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Methodist Church says Jones was able to blind people with his charisma, and the catastrophe that occurred at Jonestown “opened our eyes. We won’t go along today with anyone who will run over poor people.”