Today:
You know the drill: this is the thread for all your history-related outpourings that are not necessarily questions. Minor questions that you feel don't need or merit their own threads are welcome too. Discovered a great new book, documentary, article or blog? Has your Ph.D. application been successful? Have you made an archaeological discovery in your back yard? Did you find an anecdote about the Doge of Venice telling a joke to Michel Foucault? Tell us all about it.
As usual, moderation in this thread will be relatively non-existent -- jokes, anecdotes and light-hearted banter are welcome.
You know you've been spending too much time in the archives when you lament the coming of the weekend and the Keeper says "take home what you need." So I'll get to do some more research transcription tomorrow. (I now wish I'd taken a box--I could have done a whole weekend of work.)
This is a little-discussed side effect of doing a lot of work in unusual or less-traveled archives--the staff virtually adopts you. Too bad I don't drink, because the staff at some repositories can really tie one on.
In other news, I've got to keep my hand in for two searches because I'm technically only on release, not full sabbatical. So I get to score apps from recent PhDs and ABDs trying to land a job. No pressure, it's only someone's life, and it wasn't that long ago that I was on the other side of it...
To all librarians and archivists, I am sorry for not being more diligent about picking up my book requests, returning them on time, and properly cancelling requests. I was not aware of the trouble or monetary cost it takes to get some of these resources. I will do better in the future.
I'm in Cambridge, meeting up with some old colleagues, giving some talks (formal and informal), and I did a commentary on the play Copenhagen last night. I also wrote a blog post about the time the Manhattan Project head almost "disappeared" a scientist: The plot against Leo Szilard.
Peoples Temple. Where do we start?
Well, the most obvious way would probably be a very short timeline:
| year | event |
|---|---|
| 1955 | Peoples Temple established in Indianapolis, Indiana. |
| 1965 | Jones family and over 100 Temple members move to Mendocino County, California |
| 1969 | Peoples Temple build church in Redwood Valley; church membership grows to 300 |
| 1970 | Peoples Temple begin to hold services in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Will later establish churches in both cities. |
| 1973 | Peoples Temple grows to over 2500 members, due to recruitment drives in black communities; church leaders vote to begin Peoples Temple Agriculture Project in Guyana, South America |
| 1974 | Members travel to Guyana and begin to construct what will be known as Jonestown |
| 1976 | Peoples Temple headquarters is moved from Redwood Valley to San Francisco; Temple members become active in city politics; Peoples Forum newspaper started |
| 1977 | Concerned Relatives and Citizens Committee founded, begin to accuse Peoples Temple of mistreating church members and of human rights violations; negative media coverage causes Jones, Temple leadership, and hundreds members to immigrate to Jonestown in the span of several months; government agencies investigate Temple care centers for potential fraud |
| 1978 | Leo Ryan plans trip to Jonestown, ends in tragedy; over 900 Jonestown residents, including Jim Jones, die on November 18, most of them through cyanide poisoning; five people die on Port Kaituma airstrip, including Ryan |
| 1979 | Peoples Temple assets frozen; Congress holds hearing regarding Ryan's death; unidentified and unclaimed bodies buried in mass grave in Evergreen Cemetery |
| 1983 | Peoples Temple dissolves, and its assets are divided amongst claimants |
| 1986 | Larry Layton is convicted of conspiracy to kill Ryan; he is the only Temple member tried and convicted of Ryan's murder |
(Paraphrased from the timeline given in Dear People: Remembering Jonestown.)
However, if you look at this timeline, it's very lacking. There's little to no context given. The timeline does not explain why people joined Peoples Temple, why the group recruited from the black community in San Francisco and others, why the headquarters moved to San Francisco and later to Guyana, why Leo Ryan went to Guyana, and why the community died on that final day. It's dry, it's uninteresting, and ultimately it does not satisfactorily answer the question “what was Peoples Temple?".
So let's try to sketch out a very short overview, so that I can go into details next time we meet.
I'm going to start off this section with a short quote that sums things up:
People do not knowingly join “cults” that will ultimately destroy and kill them. People join self-help groups, churches, political movements, college campus dinner socials, and the like, in an effort to be a part of something larger than themselves.
- Deborah Layton, Seductive Poison
I usually paraphrase the above as “people don't generally wake up and say 'you know, I want to join a destructive movement that wants to hurt me, sign me up!'”
Peoples Temple, like literally every other event in history, was a response to (and a reflection of) contemporary issues facing the United States when it was active. Despite the cultural amnesia and the dehumanization and the dismissal of Peoples Temple as simply “crazy cultists” who are not us and cannot represent us/our society, Peoples Temple is part of our culture, and grew out of it.
Peoples Temple was active from 1955 to 1978. During those years, we had
Even before that, we had black separatist movements, we had the separation between fundamentalist churches and social gospel churches, we have people being dissatisfied with conservative black churches (and all that entails), we have religious groups migrating to what they consider “the promised land”, etc.
So already, you start getting a picture: this group was active during a time of upheaval. While the country was focused on the Civil Rights Movement, Peoples Temple gained legitimacy and was able to give people an opportunity to take part. Peoples Temple attracted many blacks; Jim Jones might have been white, but he advocated for the cause of black people, and offered an integrated church where white and black members can congregate together to push for change. The group was active during the Cold War, and people were worried that communism would keep spreading to other Third World countries. Peoples Temple aligned itself with liberals in San Francisco, with the American Indian Movement, and with Angela Davis. The group also provided free services for the poor, and served as an advocacy group for its members to help them obtain Social Security Benefits, welfare checks, and other things. Peoples Temple was active when Lyndon B. Johnson started his War on Poverty, and it was active when Carter was elected post-Nixon and post-Watergate scandal.
Peoples Temple was not a group which acted in isolation from other events. It was a religious movement which fulfilled the needs of the hundreds and thousands of members, from your fundamentalist grandmother to your college-aged idealist. It offered faith healing, prophecy, and discussion about God/the Bible/Jesus Christ, and it offered activist opportunities for members to make a difference in the present and to help the needy. It offered a means to fight against various -isms, and it offered religious guidance.
Thus ends a short overview of what is to come. Next time, we'll try to look at some of the details, to better understand where Peoples Temple fits in context.
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