BIOGRAPHY OF JIM JONES

By Aderonke S. Ogunsakin
ronky4success@gmail.com
Pan Atlantic University
Lagos, Nigeria
October, 2014
James Warren Jones (Jim Jones), born
May 13, 1931 in the small town of Crete
near Lynn, Indianapolis, died November
18, 1978 in Jonestown Guyana. He is an
American cult leader who promised his
followers utopia in the jungles of South
America and proclaiming himself as the
messiah of the People Temple, then a
San Francisco based evangelist group. He later also claimed that he was god. On November
18, 1978 in what became known as the Jonestown massacre, the greatest single loss of
American civilian life in a deliberate act until September 11, 2001 attacks, Jones led 913 of
his followers (men, women and children) to their death via cyanide-laced punch (spawning
the metaphor "don't drink the kool aid").
His parents were James Thurman Jones, a veteran of the World War 1 (the Great War) and
victim of mustard gas who lived on disability payments, and the much younger mother
Lynetta Jones, an independent woman who would eventually followed her son to Guyana.
Jones came from Baptist and Quaker lineages, and was of Irish and Welsh descent. He was
a voracious reader as a child and had studied Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Karl Max and
Mahatma Gandhi, noting each of their strengths and weaknesses. His father was
emotionally absent and had no interest in him while his mother worked a variety of jobs; he
was therefore left to himself as his mother was often working. He developed an interest in
religion early in life, primarily because making friends was difficult for him and probably
because he was left to himself. His parents were later to split up in a divorce and he moved
with his mother to Richmond, Indiana.
At Richmond, he worked at a hospital as orderly and met Marceline Baldwin, an older
nursing student who was to later become his wife in June 1949. It was here that he joined
the communist party, and also became a student Pastor in Sommerset Southside Methodist
church in 1952, helped by a Methodist superintended who was sympathetic to communism,
but left the church on the claims of refusal to integrate African Americans (blacks) into the
church. Jones witnessed a faith-healing service at the Seventh Day Baptist Church and
observed it attracted people and their money and concluded with the financial resources
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from such healings, he could accomplish his social goals. Sequel to a religious convention
that took place from June 11 through June 15, 1956 in Cadle Tabernacle in Indianapolis
where he shared the pulpit with headliner Rev. Williams M. Branham, He began his own
church which later became the People's Temple Christian Church Full Gospel, and was an
inter-racial mission.
In 1960, Indianapolis Democratic Mayor Charles Boswell appointed Jones director of the
Human Rights Commission, during which time he helped to integrate churches, restaurants,
the police department, a theatre, amusement park and Methodist hospital. He also set up
stings to catch restaurants refusing to serve African American customers. He received
criticism in Indianapolis for his integrationist views.
Jones and Marceline had a son in 1954, Stephan Gandhi Jones and adopted several
children of at least partial non-Caucasian ancestry and referred to the clan as his "rainbow
family".
"Apostolic Socialism" concept dominated the Temple sermons, and he preached such
message as "if you are born in capitalist America, racist America, fascist America, then you
are born in sin. But if you are born in socialism, you're not born in sin".
He also derided traditional Christianity as fly away religion and rejecting the bible as a tool to
oppress women and non-whites, while also denouncing a "sky God" and laying claim to
being a god in such statements as "...if you see me as your God, I'll be your God". In 1976
conversation

with

John

Maher,

he

stated

that

he

was

agnostic

and

atheist.

The People's Temple moved to California and experienced exponential growth, with
branches in San Francisco, San Fernando and Los Angeles, and in the early 1970s, he
moved the People's Temple headquarters to San Francisco. He became influential and the
Temple was instrumental in the mayoral victory of George Moscone in 1975, subsequently,
Jones was appointed as the chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission.
The move to San Francisco brought media scrutiny most damaging was the expos by
Marshall Kilduff in the New West magazine.
He believed the entire government was after him, especially the CIA and FBI, Jones and
hundreds of his followers emigrated to Guyana and set up an agricultural settlement called
Jonestown (1977). He was respected for setting up a racially mixed church which helped the
disadvantaged; 68 percent of Jonestown residents were blacks. Jonestown was where
Jones began his belief in what he called "translation" where he and his followers would all
die together and move to another planet where they can live peacefully.
On November 18 1978, Congressman Ryan toured Jonestown with a television crew in a
tow and invited anyone who wanted to leave the compound to come with him. Same
afternoon, congressman Ryan and some defecting members of the Peoples Temple and the
rest of visitors were attacked on the order of Jones, leaving 5 people dead, including Ryan,
NBC Correspondents, Don Harris, NBC cameraman Bob Brown, San Francisco Examiner
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photographer Greg Robinson and one of the defectors, Patricia Parks, many others were
injured.
He manipulated his followers with threat of blackmail, beating and probable death, staged
bizarre rehearsals for a ritual mass suicide and led his followers into mass suicide same day
that Ryan was murdered by commanding them to drink cyanide adulterated punch, bringing
about a death toll of 913 (including 276 children). Jones died the same day of a bullet wound
to his head.
References

Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. [Internet] Jonestown Project: San
Diego State University. http://www.webcitation.org/5wTIy0buY [Retrieved 13 February 2011]

Jim

Jones.

[Internet].

2013.

The

Biography

Channel

website.

Available

from:

http://www.biography.com/people/jim-jones-10367607 [Accessed 03 Oct 2013].

Jones, Jim (1931 - 1978) American Cult Leader, [Internet]. Jones, Jim (1931 - 1978) American Cult
Leader. World of Criminal Justice, Gale., [retrieved October 10, 2012]

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple - Race and the Peoples Temple. [Internet].
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/jonestown/sfeature/race.html. [Retrieved 20 February 2007.]

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