They arrived gradually, then all at once.
For its first two years or so, Jonestown’s
permanent party consisted of around fifty people. Jim Jones spoke of moving Peoples Temple to
Guyana but set no firm date for a mass migration. There were steps taken here and there, such
as the Temple’s acceptance into the Guyanese Council of Churches. But Jones’ heyday as a San Francisco mover
and shaker forestalled any precipitous move to South America.
As 1976 gave way to 1977, however, a close
observer could have discerned something was afoot. The San Francisco passport office saw a
distinct uptick in new applications, many from elderly citizens who had never before
traveled outside the United States. Both
the Ukiah and Los Angeles churches were put up for sale, though the weekend
preaching and fundraising trips to Southern California continued.
The migration was long planned but the
suddenness of the departure was likely not.
The New West exposé sped it
up. An individual expatriation involves
jumping through numerous bureaucratic hoops; that of nearly a thousand is a
logistical headache. Yet Peoples Temple
pulled it off in a relatively short time.
Edith Roller’s journals describe the deliberateness
of the departure. Jim Jones’ abrupt leave-taking
merited scant attention there. Perhaps
it was because Edith and her fellow congregants anticipated seeing him shortly
at their new home. Edith’s writings for
the second half of 1977 contain the usual daily activities as she mulls over
when to take early retirement from her job and weighing the benefits of leaving
for Guyana after her 62nd birthday (when she would qualify for
Social Security). As with Edith, so with
the rest of the expatriates. They needed
to give notice at work, sell their houses or break leases, close bank and other
financial accounts, undergo medical checkups and immunizations, and so
forth.
It’s evident the majority of the departures
were willing. Jonestown had been held
out as a tranquil refuge from the corruption of fascist America. Many in Peoples Temple eagerly anticipated
the move. Getting there, at least by the
time Edith Roller arrived in early 1978, was a well-organized process. The Temple made the arrangements, organized
the migrants by day of departure, and packed such household goods as they were permitted. They flew from San Francisco to New York-JFK
on the United redeye, caught a connecting flight to Georgetown via Port of Spain,
and were received by Peoples Temple staff on arrival.
After clearing immigration and customs, the new
settlers were temporarily housed at the Temple’s Georgetown headquarters to
await transportation. In Edith Roller’s case,
there was time to see the few sights Georgetown afforded such as the Botanical
Gardens and zoo. The party would then head
northwest along the coast crowded on the Temple trawler and supply boat Cudjoe to Port Kaituma. (Edith, in her matter-of-fact account, nevertheless
makes the voyage seem idyllic.)
Once registered with the local police at
Morawhanna, the settlers proceeded upriver to the Temple dock. Jonestown was a further seven miles into the
jungle; the last leg of the trip was travelled in an open trailer pulled by a
farm tractor.
By the time of the exodus, the first settlers
had managed to make Jonestown a going concern.
The fifty or so who lived there had succeeded in wresting life from the poor
jungle soil. Cassava, cutlass beans, and
corn were staple crops. Jonestown raised
chickens and pigs. The crew of the Cudjoe fished off the Guyanese
coast. There was limited trade with
nearby Amerindian villages. The settlement
was Spartan but livable if photos are any indication.
Jonestown was not prepared for the arrival of
so many people over so short a time, however. The
demands of so many in such a remote location for food, shelter, and
medical care overwhelmed the settlement’s nascent infrastructure. The settlement had always relied upon purchases
from Georgetown or supplies sent from abroad, and this reliance increased with
the population. As the months
progressed, resource scarcity mounted.
Most of Jonestown’s new inhabitants were put to
work in the fields or in one of the settlement’s other agricultural
ventures. The workday ran from dawn to
dusk. Sometimes there was lunch; toward
the end two meals a day was common. Health
care was adequate but basic, with more complex cases or tests referred to
clinics in Georgetown. Housing was
adequate as basic shelter from the elements.
Sanitation was better than might be expected; Edith Roller refers to a
laundry and mentions daily showers.
It’s possible the food situation might have
improved with time as the new residents acclimated to fieldwork and
additional cultivation produced more crops.
Life in Jonestown could have been bearable notwithstanding the hardships
since its people had a shared sense of purpose.
The weak link in the bonds holding Jonestown together was its Father,
the settlement’s leader Jim Jones.
There were warning signs going back more than a
decade that Rev. Jim was becoming unbalanced.
The revival tent facet of Peoples Temple remained prominent throughout
its history, but as it acquired affluent suburbanites in California Jones’
theology began to diverge sharply from fundamentalist teachings. He denigrated the Bible as a dangerous bunch
of fables and claimed godlike powers, somehow hanging on to the Temple’s
traditionalist African American core membership despite such blaspheming. Jones’
exhortations for unity in the face of a judgmental and hostile society inculcated
a self-reliant isolation among the Temple’s adherents which may have counted for more
than religious faith or the absence of such.
Jones’ belief in conspiracies against him and Peoples
Temple began back in Indianapolis. Like
the opposition they would subsequently face in Ukiah and San Francisco, this
wasn’t entirely a matter of his imagination running away with him. The conservative establishment in 1950s Indiana
did not cotton to a white preacher leading a mixed congregation. Although the alleged vandalism of his church
by white supremacists was probably staged, it did publicize the Temple’s unjust
marginalization. In a similar fashion,
the allegations of fraud in California may have been the result of outsiders’
misunderstanding of the Temple’s robust social services program but they
certainly made Jones believe he was being persecuted even though these early
critics were voices in the wilderness as Jones and Peoples Temple were feted by
the local worthies.
The California sojourn saw the strange
excesses which would come to characterize Peoples Temple. Denunciations at Maoist-style struggle sessions,
public spankings of children and adults, and boxing matches were common in
Redwood Valley and in San Francisco. Jones
became open and even boastful about his adulterous affairs with both women and
men. He distanced himself from the main
body of the congregation, becoming secretive and reliant on the increasingly
powerful Planning Commission. He
depended upon rounds of uppers and downers to get through the day.
In Guyana, Jim Jones was accountable to no
one. The Temple leadership dealt harshly
with opposition. Slacking or defiant workers
were assigned to the Learning Crew for stints of corrective labor. Slaps or outright beatings were meted out for
small crimes. (There is an account of Jones
having a youth beaten for molesting a small child, which might have been an act
of mercy considering the consequences had he been turned over to the Guyanese
authorities.) Incorrigibles were sent to
The Box, a 6’ x 4’ covered hole in the ground.
Outright opposition could land you in the infirmary’s Special Care Unit. where
you would spend your days in a Thorazine-induced haze.
Jonestown residents were subjected to epic
monologues most nights in which Jim Jones would expound upon the horrors of the
country they had escaped. The U.S.
government was becoming ever more oppressive, dialing back civil liberties and implementing
a police reign of terror which would culminate in African Americans being
herded into concentration camps for eventual extermination. Other news would concern Peoples Temple’s
socialist brethren in the Soviet Union, Cuba, and North Korea. Another common topic was the Temple’s
apostate defectors. As the weeks and months
stretched on, daily life for the people of Jonestown became a monotonous, sleep
deprived round of work, chores, skimpy meals, and hours of Father’s evening
harangues.
As 1978 progressed, a siege mentality had set
in. His closeness to Guyana’s nabobs
notwithstanding, Jones began to insinuate that the Temple’s enemies in the
States would collude with its Guyanese hosts to launch an extermination raid on
Jonestown. To avoid this horrible fate,
Jonestown would experience unannounced suicide rehearsals Jones called White
Nights. Roused from sleep by a siren and
Father’s voice booming through the PA system, people would queue up to drink poisoned
fruit punch from metal vats only to be told afterwards by Jones it was only a
drill and what they drank was just plain punch.
Jones had originated this stunt years earlier in California as a loyalty
test for his Planning Commission. Apparently,
no one subjected to the White Nights grasped the ramifications or took them
seriously or else (and this is very possibly true) they believed the threat was
real and suicide was the best way out.
It wasn’t all darkness and dread, however. There was a lot more happening in Jonestown than
eking out a subsistence. There were
schools for kids of all ages, and for adults too. (Edith Roller was one of the teachers.) There were organized sports, including a
winning basketball team. Music was always
an indispensable part of Peoples Temple’s ministry, and this continued in
Guyana. The renowned Peoples Temple
choir, which had released an album of catchy tunes titled He’s Able in 1973, remained active. There were acting and comedy troupes
there to entertain. Even on their last
night, with congressman Leo Ryan in the audience and a clearly displeased Jim
Jones presiding over the festivities, the joy expressed by the people at the
performances on the pavilion was genuine.
Leo Ryan’s presence, which left much of Jonestown
seemingly unperturbed that evening, was a harbinger of all that which Jim Jones
had prophesied. The resulting endgame
which would destroy Jonestown and Peoples Temple was irrevocably reaching its
climax even as the singing and dancing went on.
The events of the next day were, at least as far as Jim Jones was
concerned, foreordained.
© 2018 The Unassuming Scholar
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