“What were these African Americans doing in the middle of the jungle with this white man?” filmmaker Stanley Nelson once asked (via PBS). The answer is a bit complex, but it boils down to Jim Jones taking advantage of people who were tired of segregation and institutional racism in America.
The Peoples Temple was around 70% African American in 1978, when the Jonestown massacre occurred. Many followed Jim Jones because at one point, he seemed like the real deal, seeking to turn Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech into reality. In this aspect, the Peoples Temple did well. Anyone was welcome there, including mixed-race couples, whose marriages were illegal in many states until 1967. It brought together people of different economic backgrounds, ranging from unhoused people, veterans, and runaways to affluent middle-class Black professionals. When Jones moved operations to San Francisco, his mostly-Black congregants saw him as their fighter in City Hall and in Sacramento.
In the end, this is perhaps the saddest part of the Jonestown saga. Was Jones the real deal who went mad with power, or always a manipulative sociopath? Survivors’ accounts suggest the latter, meaning that Jones took advantage of some of America’s most vulnerable and isolated. To what end? Jones would have said it was for the Revolution, but his bank accounts suggest it was the same old, same old: money, power, and control over his fellow man.
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