The Peoples Temple Massacre
In 1978, around nine hundred members of the religious group called the Peoples Temple died by suicide by drinking poison at their Guyana, South America settlement called Jonestown. The minister of the group, Jim Jones, also died by a gunshot to the head. Until the September 11th attacks, the massacre was the largest non-natural mass death of American civilians.
Jim Jones founded the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1955. He soon moved his congregation to Eureka, California to prepare for a nuclear attack Jones believed would occur in 1967, according to Rolling Stone. Jones would eventually move his congregation to a South American settlement he called Jonestown in Guyana. After not hearing from their relatives, loved ones of members eventually convinced California congressman Leo Ryan to travel to Guyana himself. The visit seemed to go well, until Ryan was ambushed by members as Jones ordered Ryan’s murder along with his companions, according to History.
Jones then constructed a mass suicide among all the members. Children were first given a mixture of cyanide and sedatives with juice before the rest of the members took the same concoction. Some members escaped into the jungle while others, including some of Jones’s sons, remained in another part of Guyana at the time, according to History. It is unclear how Jones himself died, whether a member shot him or whether he killed himself. Authorities later located the settlement and the hundreds of bodies.
At the time, the church was seen as socially progressive. Many members of the congregation were African American, which was uncommon during the segregation period. Members of the Peoples Temple would also devote their time to helping in the community during the period they stayed in California. Members would later recount how that initial period was more familial than congregational despite Jones’s authority, according to Rolling Stone.
To this day, surviving members and their families suffer from the effects of the mass tragedy.
