I.
Intro
The rise of The Peoples Temple during the 1950s through 1970s was tied to specific
national issues. Founded in 1954 by preacher Jim Jones in Indianapolis, it began as a small group
of closely-knit local people. During this time, the United States was facing various social and
political dilemmas that caused division and fear. It started with the Cold War, which had begun
less than a decade earlier, and swelled during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s. The civil
rights movement also exposed racial tensions in the U.S. right around the time of the Temple’s
formation. Furthermore, many people in major cities were either in poverty or moved to rural
communities to escape the close-mindedness of their surroundings.
Jones saw these chaotic events as an opportunity to build a massive following. He led
African-Americans to believe that he was their savior and exaggerated the oppression they were
experiencing. He also convinced scared people that he would protect them from the Cold War
and overstated its threat. Vietnam War protesters thought that Jones supported them because he
made it seem that he was anti-war as well. He made privileged white people feel obligated to
help the needy and created programs that appealed to poor people. Through his words and
actions, Jones lured hundreds of people into the Temple and kept them loyal. They eventually
came to think of him as God because he seemed to be able to solve anything, and resent the
outside world. He capitalized on these national issues to attract and sustain the loyalty of people
who desired social change and safety, and developed the grand cult of his dreams.
Disillusionment and paranoia along the way, stemming from his abuse of drugs, made Jones take
a dark turn and create a suicide plan that killed 912 of his followers on November 18, 1978.
II.
Historical Background
Various events happening in the United States during The Peoples Temple’s rise worried
Americans. One was the Cold War, which had begun in 1947. Tension between the Soviet Union
and the United States, along with more advanced weapons, made people fear a nuclear attack.
Opposing views about communism, a key cause of this conflict, also intensified the internal strife
in Vietnam between the North’s communist and South’s anti-communist governments. The
Vietnam War began in 1955, but the United States did not directly intervene until 1964. Wanting
to halt the spread of communism, President Johnson deployed up to 500,000 soldiers to help the
South. Americans grew outraged because their troops were dying in a seemingly endless and
purposeless foreign war.
Racial issues were also prevalent. The civil rights movement, which rose to national
prominence in 1955, uncovered problems that had long been brewing. African-Americans began
to actively protest the discrimination they experienced, leading white supremacists like members
of the Ku Klux Klan to violently fight them. The Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and
President Eisenhower’s sending National Guard Troops to protect black students attending
Central High School in 1957 were some of the defining moments of the racial tension that kept
Americans on edge. Young white people living in urban areas saw this chaos unfold, and were
disgusted with the close-mindedness and corruption around them. As a result, many moved to
rural communities to seek peace during the mid-1960s. Meanwhile, African-American
neighborhoods in major cities struggled with poverty.
These national circumstances all played a role in the Temple’s popularity. By exploiting
them in various ways, Jim Jones attracted people who had been impacted. He turned these
followers into cult members over the next two decades, and eventually led them to commit
suicide.
III.
Analysis
Jones exploited racial oppression to attract African-Americans to his ultimate cult. From the
very beginning of its existence, he preached racial equality and integrated his services. This was
rare in conservative Indianapolis, and piqued the interest of local blacks like Hyacinth Thrash
and Zipporah Edwards. During these services, Jones talked as if he himself were AfricanAmerican. He once said to whites, “Some of you, you think you’re white, honey, but you’re just
as black as I am.”1 The Jonestown Institute authors explain that he “identified with the Africanand Native Americans in his congregations, and often described everyone in Peoples Temple—
himself included—as part of the nation’s oppressed populations of blacks, browns, Indians, and
Asians. To make his point... he often described himself and everyone who followed him as
‘n*****s’ to distinguish themselves from those who have power and make the rules.”2 These
choices of words captivated black people even more. What further fascinated them was Jones’s
“rainbow family.” He and his wife Marceline adopted a child of every race and frequently
showed off their family in public, boosting their image as avid supporters of racial justice. These
little displays of humanity towards African-Americans helped Jones establish a base of regular
attendees.
Still searching for more followers, he began to solve discrimination problems and make
people believe that he was their savior from racism. He started out by simply addressing
individual members’ issues. An elderly African-American woman, for instance, complained that
a local maintenance company was neglecting to repair her electric service. Upon hearing this,
Jones wrote a letter to the company and personally visited its office, leading to the problem being
fixed. Author Jeff Guinn claims that the good news spread around Indianapolis and led more
African-Americans to join the Temple because they were impressed that “this white preacher
named Jim Jones didn’t just talk about doing things, he did them.”3
As Temple membership grew to the hundreds, Jones diverted his attention to larger-scale
issues. He convinced Indianapolis government officials to repair potholes and update school
textbooks in underprivileged black neighborhoods. In a bold move, he also took his black
followers to local segregated churches and challenged their pastors. Although these were just
minor changes, they seemed significant in comparison to the ineffectiveness of black preachers.
More people recognized Jones’s efforts and clamored to join the movement. He was far from
done, though. The real changes came in 1961, when he became the director of the Indianapolis
Human Relations Commission. With this newfound authority, Jones led the Temple in publicly
boycotting restaurants in which employees unfairly treated blacks. Most of them, along with
businesses who were promised flyer and newsletter promotions if they integrated, consequently
stopped their discriminatory ways. Furthermore, Jones created a Temple employment service to
help black followers get jobs, leading to a more integrated and diverse Indianapolis workforce.
His revolutionary actions sparked hope in African-Americans that he was the solution to racial
oppression and enticed them to become members of the Temple.
When the Temple moved to California in the early 1970s, Jones again took advantage of the
civil rights movement to appeal to African-Americans. He emulated the Black Panther Party,
whose members were exclusively black. “Many of the programs supported by Peoples Temple
and San Franciscan liberals,” asserts Catherine Barrett Abbott, “echoed the goals of the Black
Panther Party and their ’survival programs,’ which ‘contributed to the well-being of poor and
working- class racial and ethnic minorities.’”4 Duchess Harris and Adam John Waterman write
that The Black Panther Party’s founder was a great source of inspiration for Jones, who “tapped
some of the same sources of political and cultural identity that Huey Newton did, the same
historical references to slavery as well as the more contemporary days of Jim Crow laws.”5 The
Peoples Forum, the Temple’s newsletter, often praised Newton’s actions as well. By copying
and publicly endorsing the Black Panther Party’s methods, Jones lured Californians who desired
racial equality into the Temple.
Even in Jonestown, Guyana, he capitalized on the United States’ racial issues to preserve his
followers’ loyalty. Jones perpetuated the myth of the the King Alfred Plan, which stated that
President Nixon was going to put blacks in concentration camps, to scare the Temple’s AfricanAmerican members. He told them: “There’s a plan laid aside to put you into gas chambers” and
“[Nixon]’ll put serial numbers and a mark of the beast right on you… and every black and brown
and poor white will be done away with.”6 Furthermore, he greatly exaggerated the Ku Klux
Klan’s actions. He claimed during a meeting, “It almost took over Attica prison. They almost
stormed in and killed all the Indians and blacks and Mexicans. Where? Not in Mississippi, I’m
talking about New York State.”7 These lies scared followers and made them feel grateful that
they lived far away in Jonestown, effectively dissipating any rebellion against his control. Abbott
contends that they “show Jones’ desire to control Peoples Temple members’ emotions and to act
as their protectors.”8 He exploited their fears about racial oppression to the bitter end in order to
have time to mold them into a cult.
By targeting major poverty-stricken cities, Jones was able to gain hundreds of followers for
his eventual cult. “Jones had a built-in potential audience,” Guinn explains, “that already had
good reason to believe the government was out to get them, that white cops were the enemy, and
that it was only right that America should distribute its wealth more equally.”9 He deliberately
set up Temple branches in the Los Angeles and San Francisco ghettos to grab their residents’
attention. He and his followers then began to take road trips across the country to Chicago,
Detroit, and other populous, destitute cities. They held public services and gatherings there that
raised people’s interest in the group. Those people were brought back to California on the
Temple bus and became devoted members. Therefore, focusing on impoverished locations paid
off for Jones.
In exchange for these impoverished members’ loyalty, Jones created Temple-run programs to
provide aid for them. In California, he continued to operate the “Free Restaurant” soup kitchen,
which he had started in Indianapolis. He also established child-care and fun youth programs to
prevent kids from joining gangs in the ghettos that they were living in. Teens received a
completely free college education, thanks to the Temple covering tuition and living costs.
Furthermore, it handled senior citizens’ social security cases and helped them collect their
checks. This tremendously helped them because they had been constantly neglected by local
social security offices. It offered free drug rehab and medical care services as well for those who
could not afford them. These outreach programs, which were funded by other followers’ tithes
and profits from the Temple’s ownership of various corporations and nursing homes,
significantly helped the poor get basic resources to survive. As a result, they remained members
of the Temple and would eventually become part of Jones’s cult. Giving attention to the
widespread national poverty problem was a strategic decision that Jones made to accomplish his
dreams of forming a cult.
Although the Temple’s mission mostly appealed to African-Americans, Jones made a strong
effort to attract whites as well. After he set up a branch in rural Ukiah, California, he reached out
to several local whites and invited them to Temple-hosted social gatherings. Guinn explains that
they were idealistic young people, raised by liberal parents, who had recently moved to the area
because they had grown frustrated with their conservative urban neighbors’ narrow-mindedness
about issues such as race and the economy.10 Jones convinced them during these gatherings that
they could work towards achieving their dreams of an ideal and equal society by joining the
Temple. They bought into his vision, and in turn, recruited like-minded co-workers and relatives.
A considerable number of white people, such as Garry Lambrev, Linda Amos, and the Layton
family, became members as a result. In order to sustain their loyalty long enough to develop his
cult, Jones then made them feel ashamed of their privileged upbringing. He was quick to point
out to them that the majority of the country did not have it as good as they did growing up
because they were either racially discriminated against or stuck in poor neighborhoods. He told
white followers that they had to work the hardest to fix these injustices because they had
struggled the least throughout their lives. This compelled white people to stay in the Temple out
of guilt. They did not want to seem entitled by refusing to help the less fortunate through the
group’s outreach programs and community service. Jones skillfully exploited the common
idealistic attitude of young whites and their relocation to the countryside in the 1960s to garner
followers for his cult.
Jones capitalized on his followers’ fear of the Cold War to keep them loyal to the Temple. In
1961, he announced to them during a sermon that he had had a prophetic vision about a nuclear
bomb destroying the entire Midwest. They believed him and therefore did not think twice when
he justified his visit to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, by saying that he was searching for a safe
relocation area. In reality, according to author Julia Scheeres in A Thousand Lives, “He wanted to
isolate his people so he could carry out his macabre plan.”11 Putting his followers in an
unfamiliar place would make them feel vulnerable and give in to Jones’s commands more easily,
letting him develop his cult. His prediction seemed to be validated when in 1962, the United
States discovered the Soviets’ missile site in Cuba. This scary event kept members loyal while he
was traveling. Although his first relocation attempt failed, he continued to use his vision to
manipulate his followers and would later find an equally remote settlement in Guyana. Wanting
them to join him in California, Jones simply told them that the aforementioned bomb would kill
them if they did not immediately leave Indianapolis. He then set a specific date that the bomb
would come, July 1967, when they grew unhappy with living there. As a result, members
continued to be loyal and stay in California out of fear. When July 1967 passed by and nothing
happened, Jones distracted them with other issues so that they would not realize he was a plain
liar.
Jones created “accident cycles” to further increase his followers’ panic about the Cold War
and belief in his nuclear bomb hallucination. He declared in a sermon that these were times of
high danger in which they had to listen to his orders closely, or else a tragic event would occur.
The possible terrible events he mentioned ranged from minor car crashes to the destructive bomb
from his 1961 vision. To make the cycles seem legitimate, Jones staged lesser-scaled disasters.
He once told an adviser to bump his car into that of a disobedient member to show everyone
what could happen if they did not follow his commands. These kinds of occurrences made them
buy into the bomb threat and dread the Cold War even more than they previously did.
Consequently, Jones sustained their loyalty, obedience, and appreciation, as they did not want
anything bad to happen to them and truly thought that he cared about their safety. His successful
exploitation of the Cold War enabled him to sustain a massive following for his future cult.
National resentment of the Vietnam War allowed Jones to attract and retain more
members to form his cult. He organized the Temple’s march in 1966 to protest American
military involvement in Vietnam, knowing the backlash it would cause. Sure enough, the mostly
conservative locals jeered as members took over Ukiah, California’s streets. This heightened
followers’ “us vs. them” mentality and consequently, their dedication to the Temple’s mission of
empowering the oppressed. On the other hand, the march impressed a few residents such as
Judge Robert Winslow because Jones and his followers had risked public humiliation to stand up
for their beliefs. They joined the Temple as a result. In 1969, students at San Francisco State
College had organized a strike against the school administration’s collaboration with the
Vietnam draft. When secretary Edith Roller saw that the police were brutally beating them, she
publicly resigned from her job. Jones read about her press conference in the San Francisco
Chronicle and welcomed her to his “open-minded” church where, he told her, she could work
towards creating social justice without facing backlash. She became the Temple’s apostolic
socialism teacher and her formerly unpopular opinions became validated by other followers’
support. Jones — unlike anyone else Roller had ever met — seemed to condemn the violence in
Vietnam and want to raise up the helpless protestors fighting for the war to end. He also toyed
with members’ fears about the chaos from the war. Scheeres contends that through his
newspaper read-alouds at services which emphasized the magnitude of deaths in Vietnam and
among student protesters, he “struck a nerve” with his followers and made it seem like “the
world was imploding.”12 His words persuaded them to stay and fight harder for a solution.
As he continued to collect nearly one thousand followers in total, Jones worked to transition
them into a cult. He used the disguise of radical socialism to move them in that direction. In
1970, he declared that all members were socialists, beginning their involvement in the political
scene. Sacrificing everything for the “cause,” which Jones announced was the goal of creating a
completely equal society, became their motto. Followers were not allowed to associate with
outsiders in non-Temple settings anymore. They became fully devoted, as volunteering for
outreach programs became their full-time jobs. If they grew tired, Jones questioned if they were
truly dedicated to the cause and cared about social justice. He also encouraged members to live
communally so no one had special privileges, and forced them to sign documents to give up their
possessions and sources of income. Everything was shared in a socialist society, he would say
whenever complaints arose. He convinced Temple members that these conditions were necessary
to become good socialists. In reality, they extended Jones’s control over their lives so that he
could more easily mold them into a cult. They gradually lost their individuality and agency.
Jones often criticized the American capitalist government, and praised communists and
socialists. According to Guinn, Jones claimed, “The real U.S. government was run in secret by
white men dedicated to the eradication of socialism and who used the FBI and CIA to carry out
illegal attacks on organizations such as the Temple.”13 Jones also boldly claimed, “If you’re born
in capitalist America, racist America, fascist America, then you’re born in sin. But if you’re born
in socialism, you’re not born in sin.”14 In a 1957 sermon, he idealized communism by explaining
that it had figures akin to saviors and prophets. Jones went as far as to say that he’d prefer to be a
member of the Communist Party than belong to a group of hypocritical Christians, which was
part of his long-standing criticism of Christianity. Though this criticism is ironic for a purported
Christian preacher, his words increased his followers’ resentment of the American government,
and made them more receptive to the radical ideas he was preaching.
Jones confirmed the Temple’s status as a cult by convincing his followers that he was God.
One way in which he accomplished this was by pretending to have healing powers. Nothing
displayed Temple members’ faith in him more than his fake miracle healings. They started out
pretty straightforward: Jones would overhear someone before a service talking about an illness or
disability that he or she had. Then, during the service, he instructed the member to stand up and
gave a lengthy speech. Miraculously, he or she seemed to not feel pain afterwards. Jones
marveled how he could “just call people out and they’d get healed of everything.”15 As he
encountered more educated followers, he tweaked his procedure. Plants in the audience reported
back to Jones about the things that they heard from new members; then, he would proceed with
the healing. It amazed the unaware crowds. The healings reached their peak when he claimed to
be able to remove cancerous tumors from people’s bodies. Actually, the “tumors” were chicken
pieces and the “cured” people were members who were ordered to stage the event. Jones did not
stop there, though. He even plotted his own assassination attempts to show them that he could
“cure” himself. The healings were just a trick up his sleeve to get followers to worship him like
God and believe that he was the answer to all their problems. They were risky because the idea
that someone could be cured by just a few words by one man is ridiculous, but the desperate
people wanted any glimmer of hope. Their unwavering belief gave Jones the supreme aura he
needed to establish his cult.
Another way that Jones led Temple members to think of him as God was to move them
away from the King James Bible. That essentially made them abandon Christianity and its
traditional God. After he lost local influence in Indianapolis, he ranted on a radio station and
called the Bible propaganda. Even though he regained some of that influence in California
during the 1970s, he never stopped criticizing Christianity. Jones told his followers that the Bible
was the “the root of all our problems today. Racism is taught in it. Oppression is taught in it.”16
He encouraged them to throw theirs away and shocked them by stomping on one during a
sermon. Furthermore, he published “The Letter Killeth” in 1961 and distributed it to everyone.
This booklet criticized and identified the Bible’s “errors.” Through his actions, Jones increased
his followers’ skepticism and resentment of the book and consequently, the God contained
within it. It made it easier to persuade them that he was the true God that they should be
revering, leading to a cult-like mentality.
Jones also made people believe that he was God through the powerful words he spoke during
sermons. He once told them, “I’m able to walk all night and all day, and days without sleep or
rest, without food, because I have entered into that which you said was God in the suppositional
sky, but he never came near you. I am God Almighty.”17 He also claimed that he was, “going to
prove I am God. I’m going to take away all the symptoms, there’ll be no more burning, there’ll
be no more back difficulty ... I’m going to give [them] a ... dose of good health.”18 Jones even
said that, “the mind that was in Jesus Christ is in me now.”19 Whatever he said resonated with
and captivated his predominantly African-American audience because he effectively
incorporated the Pentecostal style of preaching into his services. Popular among black Christians,
it involved active dancing, singing, and a “call and response” system in which the congregants
would often interrupt the preacher’s speech with shouts of approval. Because of Jones’s
charismatic approach, people eagerly accepted his claims that he was God. Lambrev explains:
“When he said that he was God, [he] didn’t disbelieve him for a minute.”20 By making members
believe that he was God, Jones transformed them into a full-fledged cult.
Disillusionment led Jones down a dark path and made his cult his mass murder victims. He
started abusing amphetamines in California to deal with the stress of micromanaging the
Temple’s operations. The powerful drugs made him unpredictable and paranoid. This paranoia
only heightened in Jonestown due to several conflicts that Jones believed could threaten the
control of his cult. In 1977, American reporters had discovered scandals inside the Temple,
which included physical violence towards disobedient followers and fraudulent handling of
revenues. They, particularly Marshall Kilduff of the San Francisco Chronicle, were working on
exposés that had the potential to damage the Temple’s squeaky-clean reputation while its
members were in the process of moving to Guyana. Jones was also dealing with a custody
dispute with the Stoens, a family that had recently defected from the group and wanted their son
John Victor back from Jonestown. Fearing that his departure could inspire other families to
demand their children back, Jones refused to give him up. This eventually contributed to his
belief that the American and Guyanese governments were co-conspiring to destroy the Temple
because an important Guyanese official had been visiting the United States when the Stoens’
lawyer came to pressure Jones at Jonestown. The absence of the official, who had frequently
helped Jones resolve any issues, made him believe that he had lost the Guyanese government’s
support. Furthermore, some residents’ family members who grew worried about their well-being
formed the Concerned Relatives group. They pushed for more thorough inspections of
Jonestown and the right to visit their relatives. This convinced Jones that the walls were caving
in on his power. As a result, he formulated a plan to kill all of his followers before anyone else
could take them away from him.
To make his horrific scheme work, Jones constantly abused his followers and experimented
with different death methods. He encouraged members to spy on and report each other if they
were not following the rules. He then put these misbehaving people in the “Learning Crew,” a
punishment group whose members were publicly humiliated. Anyone who tried to escape
Jonestown suffered severe consequences, even having his or her legs chained to a wall, which
was what survivor Tommy Bogue experienced after running into the forest without permission.
These cruel disciplinary methods scared members into unquestionably obeying Jones’s orders. In
addition, they spent day and night manufacturing toys and working in the fields to produce food.
Jones “ate heaping plates of [this] food,” observes Scheeres, “as their stomachs churned.”21 The
combination of hard labor and starvation made residents too exhausted to resist his commands.
He also cut off their access to the outside world by locking away their passports and possessions.
Letters to relatives in the United States were always censored and altered to make it seem like
Jonestown was a utopia. For that same purpose, Jones made his followers rehearse answers to
visiting government officials’ questions. This isolation let him exert more control over their
actions and prevent outsiders’ interference.
He was not subtle about making his dark plan become known, either. He foreshadowed the
massacre frequently by telling members things like, “You would rather kill yourself first before
[the government] got ahold of you.”22 Meanwhile, Jones and his advisers smuggled guns into
Jonestown, which guards would use on the day of the massacre to force people to drink the
cyanide. He also ordered the settlement’s “doctor,” Larry Schacht, to research different kinds of
poison and buy enough to kill 1,800 people. Moreover, he began to call “white nights,” times
when Jonestown was supposedly under attack by American or Guyanese soldiers sent by the
government. They heightened followers’ own paranoia about the government and the outside
world as result. Because they had to stay on alert at all times during these fake events, they also
became exhausted to the point where they just began to blindly follow Jones’s orders. On top of
that, he conducted fake poison tests on his closest assistants to see who would loyally die for him
and the socialist cause, and who would essentially betray him by calling for help. Every one of
these measures made Temple followers give into whatever he wanted and goaded them towards
death. It all came to fruition when Congressman Leo Ryan’s visit to Jonestown caused Jones to
panic beyond recovery and ultimately pull the trigger on the death plan the next day: November
18, 1978.
IV.
Conclusion
Jim Jones clearly exploited several national events to gain and sustain the loyalty of
followers for his cult. He gradually implemented radical socialism to make them more obedient
and resist the outside world. They came to believe that he was God, adopting a complete cult-like
attitude. For his final act of creating a grand cult, Jones set up Jonestown in Guyana to isolate his
followers and got them to come along by disguising it as a “socialist paradise”. Throughout the
process, he became disillusioned, causing him to develop a “revolutionary suicide” plan to kill
all members.
The tragic story serves as a lesson even to this day, as there are still potential cults around the
world. It is not uncommon for people to wonder how residents so easily fell into Jones’s trap and
were led to believe that killing themselves was the best option. They think that they could never
be so foolish themselves. But the victims were ordinary people who just desired a more equal
society and were misled into thinking that Jones could make it happen. Any compassionate
human being could’ve been in the same situation. There are some steps that one can take to
prevent a similar event from occurring, though. One is to stand up when you know something’s
wrong before it goes completely downhill. Some Temple followers knew that Jones lied to them
constantly and most everyone knew that he was erratically violent towards the end of his life. In
fact, a survivor admitted that he saw him rape a woman and “knew it was wrong, but [he] didn’t
do a thing to stop it.”23 Maybe the outcome would have been different if more people had
interfered with his previous destructive actions. This massacre also teaches us to always think for
ourselves. Guinn wraps it up perfectly when he says that “Jim Jones epitomizes the worst that
can happen when we let one person dictate what we hear [and] what we believe.”24 Temple
followers believed that Jones had their best interests in mind and completely put their faith in
him. If they had given their skeptical thoughts more consideration, they might’ve seen that he
was nothing more than a con artist. Thousands of people were left significantly scarred because
they bought into one man’s outrageous dreams, not knowing that they would take a drastic and
sadistic turn. Although we have the facts that tell us how it all transpired, it’s still so difficult to
imagine.
Endnotes
1
Cited in Abbott, Catherine Barrett, "The Reverend Jim Jones and Religious, Political, and Racial
Radicalism in Peoples Temple" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1037. 79.
2
Cited in Ibid., 79.
Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2018), 69.
4 Abbott, 80-81.
5 Cited in Ibid., 81.
6 Cited in Ibid., 85.
7 Cited in Ibid., 84.
8 Ibid., 86.
9 Guinn, 244.
10 Ibid., 241.
11 Julia Scheeres, A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at
Jonestown (New York: Free Press, 2011), 91.
12 Ibid., 24.
13 Guinn, 146.
14 Cited in Abbott, 52.
15 Cited in Guinn, 63.
16 Cited in Ibid., 122.
17 Cited in Abbott, 25.
18 Cited in Ibid., 25.
19 Cited in Guinn, 123.
20 Cited in Abbott, 26.
21 Scheeres, 139.
22 Cited in Ibid., 179.
23 Cited in Joshua Alston, “Remembering Jonestown,” Newsweek, October 19, 2006,
https://www.newsweek.com/remembering-jonestown-111649.
24 Cited in Alston.
3
Bibliography
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Radicalism in Peoples Temple" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1037.
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Schuster, 2018.
Scheeres, Julia. A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at
Jonestown. New York: Free Press, 2011.
Alston, Joshua. “Remembering Jonestown.” Newsweek. October 19, 2006.
https://www.newsweek.com/remembering-jonestown-111649.