Uncovering the blackness of the People's Temple
December 27, 2018 4:25 PM Subscribe
Discussions of the Jonestown Massacre typically note that most of the victims were African-American, but subsequent accounts have mostly focused on Jones, who was white, or on testimony of white survivors. Jamilah King, who grew up in a predominantly-black San Francisco neighborhood that she now realizes was deeply scarred by the massacre, explores an online archive of the People's Temple, mostly administered by survivors of the movement and relatives of people who died at Jonestown. She discusses what we can learn from the People's Temple and from efforts to keep alive the memory of those who were drawn to it.
I became fascinated with Jonestown not because I was repelled by the idea of people mindlessly following along on some wild journey to build a utopian community, but because, on some level, I got how they did. I know how it feels to want to be a part of something that is separate but still part of the community in which you’re raised. I wasn’t born until nearly a decade after Jonestown, but the Fillmore I grew up in was one besieged by stories of loss. It was the Dot Com boom of the late 1990s, and all around me were stories of black families who were leaving the city because their rents were too high, their property taxes had skyrocketed, or the violence and neglect of the preceding decades left them aching for a fresh start elsewhere.
It’s extremely lonely and vulnerable to be born and raised and black in San Francisco these days. My mom is aging, and I’m a thirtysomething living 3,000 miles away and feeling increasingly anxious about the amounts of care I’ll have to provide to her on my own. For this, and so many other reasons, in this time of tribalism and instability, with inequality on the rise and people feeling moved to find a political savior, Jonestown is still worth revisiting. So too are the people still surviving it.
A family friend was at Jonestown and got out. I grew up in the SF bay area and thought myself well-versed on the Jonestown Massacre. This is the first time I've ever learned that most of the victims were African American.
posted by lothar at 5:30 PM on December 27, 2018 [9 favorites]
posted by lothar at 5:30 PM on December 27, 2018 [9 favorites]
So this is wild. I feel kind of ashamed that I didn't realize who Jones' followers were, where they were from (culturally or hometown) or where Jonestown the location was. I apparently only absorbed this as the source for the reference "drinking the kool-aid" and something that was kind of morbid to joke about, but something that people still sometimes would joke about in a transgressive way.
It could be erasure of people of color, but it could also be that I didn't really pay any attention when I learned about this and have instead absorbed the random pop-culture recreations of this in tv and movies that show white people. So perhaps something more like pop-culture revisionism?
posted by Secretariat at 5:34 PM on December 27, 2018 [2 favorites]
It could be erasure of people of color, but it could also be that I didn't really pay any attention when I learned about this and have instead absorbed the random pop-culture recreations of this in tv and movies that show white people. So perhaps something more like pop-culture revisionism?
posted by Secretariat at 5:34 PM on December 27, 2018 [2 favorites]
Aw shoot, is "Drinking the Koolaid" attributed to Ken Kesey? Well, I guess that makes the phrase a little less morbid, at least originally.
posted by Secretariat at 5:38 PM on December 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Secretariat at 5:38 PM on December 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
I always thought it was a Kesey thing too originally, but apparently it’s 99% a Jonestown thing.
posted by Sterros at 5:59 PM on December 27, 2018
posted by Sterros at 5:59 PM on December 27, 2018
According to this analysis on the Alternative Considerations website, 71% of the people who died at Jonestown were black, 22.5% were white, and 6% were mixed or other. About half of those who died were black women. So yeah, just massively disproportionately black people, and especially black women. And I think there are a lot of reasons that doesn't get discussed, a lot of which is racism and erasure, but some of which may be shame within black communities about how many people were drawn to Jones prior to the massacre.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:00 PM on December 27, 2018 [25 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:00 PM on December 27, 2018 [25 favorites]
From King's piece:
There’s Marcus A. Anderson, named after his uncle, who was 15 when he died at Jonestown. There’s Joyce Marie Brown, 18 when she died at Jonestown, who was a “lovely girl with a beautiful spirit,” according to her creative writing teacher, Judy Beebelaar, who also added a poem Brown wrote in class. Edna May Bowman was 48 when she died at Jonestown, but her surviving family still tells stories about her, according to her granddaughter, Jawana. “Whole families died over there,” my mom tells me later over the phone. And she’s right—it’s jarring, generations gone in a matter of hours. The Hicks family from Detroit lost four. The Moton family from Philadelphia lost five. The Lewis family from San Francisco has stuck with me the most: They lost 27.
So, you take that, and put that reality in the hands of a bunch of milquetoast white boys who fancy themselves total edgelords, like so...
Representations of Jonestown in the Arts:
We can find a number of examples of Jonestown treated as an object. Many works use the Jonestown narrative—by which I mean images, figures, and tropes as well as texts—or evoke the events, in order to make a point about something else. It is an object in its own right which has multiple meaning. The word “Jonestown” might be used, for instance, to suggest death, chicanery, or oppression in a completely different context. Or it might simply be exploited for shock value. The Brian Jonestown Massacre, a rock band vaguely reminiscent of 1960s British groups, includes Jonestown in its name as an attention-getting device, much as the Dead Kennedys or Jello Biafra selected their names. The musical group Jonestown also uses the name to connote a variety of meanings. Its songs, which oscillate between rap and mushy R&B, do not address Jonestown directly, but the themes of oppression might. In these ways Jonestown is evoked but is not the focus of the artists’ goal.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:15 PM on December 27, 2018 [7 favorites]
There’s Marcus A. Anderson, named after his uncle, who was 15 when he died at Jonestown. There’s Joyce Marie Brown, 18 when she died at Jonestown, who was a “lovely girl with a beautiful spirit,” according to her creative writing teacher, Judy Beebelaar, who also added a poem Brown wrote in class. Edna May Bowman was 48 when she died at Jonestown, but her surviving family still tells stories about her, according to her granddaughter, Jawana. “Whole families died over there,” my mom tells me later over the phone. And she’s right—it’s jarring, generations gone in a matter of hours. The Hicks family from Detroit lost four. The Moton family from Philadelphia lost five. The Lewis family from San Francisco has stuck with me the most: They lost 27.
So, you take that, and put that reality in the hands of a bunch of milquetoast white boys who fancy themselves total edgelords, like so...
Representations of Jonestown in the Arts:
We can find a number of examples of Jonestown treated as an object. Many works use the Jonestown narrative—by which I mean images, figures, and tropes as well as texts—or evoke the events, in order to make a point about something else. It is an object in its own right which has multiple meaning. The word “Jonestown” might be used, for instance, to suggest death, chicanery, or oppression in a completely different context. Or it might simply be exploited for shock value. The Brian Jonestown Massacre, a rock band vaguely reminiscent of 1960s British groups, includes Jonestown in its name as an attention-getting device, much as the Dead Kennedys or Jello Biafra selected their names. The musical group Jonestown also uses the name to connote a variety of meanings. Its songs, which oscillate between rap and mushy R&B, do not address Jonestown directly, but the themes of oppression might. In these ways Jonestown is evoked but is not the focus of the artists’ goal.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:15 PM on December 27, 2018 [7 favorites]
Oh--yeah, when you look into Jonestown in a little more detail, it makes total sense that so many of the victims were black (and especially black women). You really can't understand how Jones stepped into power and how he took over without understanding the racial dynamics of the era he was stepping into.
I am delighted that this woman is telling her community's story, because so much of the writing about Jones frames him in terms of his charisma and his personal magnetism. And the thing is, Jones' career blossomed and grew specifically because he exploited a specific cultural context of racial inequality and injustice. He grew his following in the first place because he approached black communities as a kind of white savior, leveraging his own privilege in exchange for followers' devotion.
If you want to see a historical example of toxic allyship on the left, you could do much worse than study the People's Temple--well before Jonestown and Guyana. He only left California because complaints of abuse were dogging him, after all. Guyana just gave him the freedom to indulge his desire for total control in a space where his followers quite literally had nowhere to go.
posted by sciatrix at 6:33 PM on December 27, 2018 [35 favorites]
I am delighted that this woman is telling her community's story, because so much of the writing about Jones frames him in terms of his charisma and his personal magnetism. And the thing is, Jones' career blossomed and grew specifically because he exploited a specific cultural context of racial inequality and injustice. He grew his following in the first place because he approached black communities as a kind of white savior, leveraging his own privilege in exchange for followers' devotion.
If you want to see a historical example of toxic allyship on the left, you could do much worse than study the People's Temple--well before Jonestown and Guyana. He only left California because complaints of abuse were dogging him, after all. Guyana just gave him the freedom to indulge his desire for total control in a space where his followers quite literally had nowhere to go.
posted by sciatrix at 6:33 PM on December 27, 2018 [35 favorites]
It's always been hard for me to determine when Jim Jones went from legitimate desegregationist (I don't doubt that at one point he was in earnest--he gave up a lot and made a lot of enemies early on by being vocal about it) to "their profound yearning for racial justice makes this group of people much easier for me to exploit, so let's keep going with that."
But yeah, I actually think it's worth it, if you can stomach it, to take a deep dive into People's Temple and Jones because there's a lot going on there that's still very relevant and important but misunderstood.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:36 PM on December 27, 2018 [16 favorites]
But yeah, I actually think it's worth it, if you can stomach it, to take a deep dive into People's Temple and Jones because there's a lot going on there that's still very relevant and important but misunderstood.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:36 PM on December 27, 2018 [16 favorites]
Both were trained journalists and almost immediately they began submitting Freedom of Information Act requests for thousands of hours of audio recordings and other records that were taken from the compound in Guyana by the FBI before even the bodies had been evacuated. Slowly, those tapes began to trickle in—including the infamous so-called “death tape,” in which Jones is heard encouraging his followers to drink the poison amid wails and screams from the crowd. Around 1999, McGehee vowed to transcribe each and every recording in order to make the content more readily available. It turns out there are 964 (all of which the FBI has since made publicly available online). He still has hundreds more to go.
This must be horrendous work, but it's important. I've listened to the "death tape" once after hearing a few bits and pieces of it in various documentaries about it, and the thing that sticks out is that most people were not going willingly - they were being held at gunpoint. And you can hear it. It's awful.
That makes the whole "drinking the Kool-Aid" (which was actually Flavor-Aid) metaphor a really weird one for people to use. My sense of humour is dark as fuck but I've actually complained about people using it in a work context because they're literally making a joke about a mass murder/suicide in a meeting and in so doing getting the facts totally wrong.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:44 PM on December 27, 2018 [33 favorites]
This must be horrendous work, but it's important. I've listened to the "death tape" once after hearing a few bits and pieces of it in various documentaries about it, and the thing that sticks out is that most people were not going willingly - they were being held at gunpoint. And you can hear it. It's awful.
That makes the whole "drinking the Kool-Aid" (which was actually Flavor-Aid) metaphor a really weird one for people to use. My sense of humour is dark as fuck but I've actually complained about people using it in a work context because they're literally making a joke about a mass murder/suicide in a meeting and in so doing getting the facts totally wrong.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:44 PM on December 27, 2018 [33 favorites]
The Road to Jonestown is a really great book that does a deep dive into how it all came to be, and how it ended. Admittedly, I didn't know much about the whole thing before reading it, but a lot was really surprising. It discusses a lot about how he did try to help marginalized people, and really was instrumental in desegregation efforts. And yeah, the Kool-Aid was very much not consumed willingly, and they put way too much poison in, so it was a painful, convulsive death, not just falling asleep. To watch people go through that while you're waiting in line, at gunpoint, is unimaginable. Some people did try to escape, but they were in the middle of an unforgiving jungle so that wasn't a great option either.
posted by Fig at 6:53 PM on December 27, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by Fig at 6:53 PM on December 27, 2018 [10 favorites]
Fascinating, I have read and know a bit about Jones and Jonestown but I had absolutely no idea that so many of his followers were African American and from San Francisco.
Same here. I knew that it was organized around principles of racial equality and reconciliation, but I think I made hte assumption that, like a lot of other churches that profess those things, the congregation was largely white liberals who believe in those things as ideals but don't know that many nonwhite people personally.
This is fascinating, poignant, touching. It is amazing to see how thoroughly whiteness erases lives and skews stories. People often say how hard it is to understand Jonestown. Perhaps that's because so many of us were so wrong - or at best, ignorant - about who was part of it, why they were drawn to it, and how it was managed.
posted by Miko at 6:54 PM on December 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
Same here. I knew that it was organized around principles of racial equality and reconciliation, but I think I made hte assumption that, like a lot of other churches that profess those things, the congregation was largely white liberals who believe in those things as ideals but don't know that many nonwhite people personally.
This is fascinating, poignant, touching. It is amazing to see how thoroughly whiteness erases lives and skews stories. People often say how hard it is to understand Jonestown. Perhaps that's because so many of us were so wrong - or at best, ignorant - about who was part of it, why they were drawn to it, and how it was managed.
posted by Miko at 6:54 PM on December 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
King's article mentions Sikivu Hutchinson. Links to her work are collected at a page at the online archive site.
posted by audi alteram partem at 7:05 PM on December 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by audi alteram partem at 7:05 PM on December 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'm reading some of the survivor narratives on the Alternative Considerations site. Interestingly, Trump's election seems to have triggered many survivors, or at least generated new perspectives. One example:
The decision to reveal more of my personal conduct as a Temple member had its genesis in President Trump’s comment during his candidacy to the effect that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody,” and still retain his supporters’ unquestioning loyalty. When I first heard this, I smirked that it was nothing more than a thoughtless expression of dark humor and a gross insult to his supporters. Later on, it dawned on me his remark could easily be applied to the “me” of 45 years ago with respect to my devotion to Jim Jones. Like today’s supposed “Trump Base,” I held Jim to a zero standard of moral conduct, excused his financial charades, and fully approved his efforts to destroy “defectors.” Why, oh why, would I, a relatively rational individual, give my absolute loyalty to a narcissistic sociopath like Jim Jones?posted by Miko at 7:15 PM on December 27, 2018 [38 favorites]
(I don't doubt that at one point he was in earnest--he gave up a lot and made a lot of enemies early on by being vocal about it)
I don't know; you can make an equally compelling argument that Jones was drawn to the struggle by the appeal that martyrdom in the face of injustice held for him. The man was a narcissist, and narcissists aren't necessarily only fed in money or comfort: they can be fed by anything they find emotionally gratifying, and the respect and adulation that comes from being seen to sacrifice can be a powerful attraction.
In the end, we'll never know. But it's something to keep in mind when you evaluate moral luminaries: Jones certainly wasn't the first toxic person drawn to larger movements motivated by genuine desire for social justice, and he certainly won't be the last. I worry about the narratives we tell surrounding men like Jim Jones that paint him as somehow disconnected, a person apart from the people that surround us, and render his victims into faceless entities as separate from ourselves as he is from our own modern public figures and beloved dignitaries.
I appreciate works like this and the jonestown project that bring us context and humanize what is often framed as an inhuman event. They teach us how to identify the warning signs of yesterdays' tragedies so that we can try to prevent them from happening anew today.
posted by sciatrix at 7:31 PM on December 27, 2018 [17 favorites]
I don't know; you can make an equally compelling argument that Jones was drawn to the struggle by the appeal that martyrdom in the face of injustice held for him. The man was a narcissist, and narcissists aren't necessarily only fed in money or comfort: they can be fed by anything they find emotionally gratifying, and the respect and adulation that comes from being seen to sacrifice can be a powerful attraction.
In the end, we'll never know. But it's something to keep in mind when you evaluate moral luminaries: Jones certainly wasn't the first toxic person drawn to larger movements motivated by genuine desire for social justice, and he certainly won't be the last. I worry about the narratives we tell surrounding men like Jim Jones that paint him as somehow disconnected, a person apart from the people that surround us, and render his victims into faceless entities as separate from ourselves as he is from our own modern public figures and beloved dignitaries.
I appreciate works like this and the jonestown project that bring us context and humanize what is often framed as an inhuman event. They teach us how to identify the warning signs of yesterdays' tragedies so that we can try to prevent them from happening anew today.
posted by sciatrix at 7:31 PM on December 27, 2018 [17 favorites]
My company interviewed some longtime employees and one video had a lady saying, "they talk about drinking the koolaid, but in this place I'm glad I did!" I went straight to the PR director and said "Do NOT put this online," and thankfully he agreed. But she was older than me, and still thought it was a harmless saying. And people laughed! Jesus.
I did know many of Jones' followers were black and have wondered about his ability to draw them. Thanks for this post.
posted by emjaybee at 7:37 PM on December 27, 2018 [6 favorites]
I did know many of Jones' followers were black and have wondered about his ability to draw them. Thanks for this post.
posted by emjaybee at 7:37 PM on December 27, 2018 [6 favorites]
Their Who Died page sheds a lot of light on individuals who died at Jonestown, who they were, and has photos where they're available, and remembrances left by friends and family members:
Orelia Anderson was born in 1910.
Trinidette Baisy was born in 1970.
There are faces and names behind the big story, and people who were left behind and are still here.
I went straight to the PR director and said "Do NOT put this online," and thankfully he agreed.
Yeah, I once had a conversation with an HR person about someone objecting to me objecting to their jokes about it in a meeting. I ended up having to show her a few decidedly NSFW items about Jonestown on my phone before the penny dropped and she went "Oh. Ok. Now I see why this is a problem. I had no idea."
And that, right there, is the problem.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:44 PM on December 27, 2018 [16 favorites]
Orelia Anderson was born in 1910.
Trinidette Baisy was born in 1970.
There are faces and names behind the big story, and people who were left behind and are still here.
I went straight to the PR director and said "Do NOT put this online," and thankfully he agreed.
Yeah, I once had a conversation with an HR person about someone objecting to me objecting to their jokes about it in a meeting. I ended up having to show her a few decidedly NSFW items about Jonestown on my phone before the penny dropped and she went "Oh. Ok. Now I see why this is a problem. I had no idea."
And that, right there, is the problem.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:44 PM on December 27, 2018 [16 favorites]
The Road to Jonestown mentions that part of the reason there were so many older, black, victims was that the crumbling finances of the Peoples Temple relied heavily on their retirement checks.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 7:47 PM on December 27, 2018 [13 favorites]
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 7:47 PM on December 27, 2018 [13 favorites]
Also, in case people are worried: there are no graphic pictures in the article or (as far as I’ve seen) the website. I sometimes avoid reading this kind of thing because I don’t want to stumble on upsetting photos.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:27 PM on December 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:27 PM on December 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
I don’t think I learned until this moment that not all the people drank willingly. Holy shit.
posted by corb at 8:51 PM on December 27, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by corb at 8:51 PM on December 27, 2018 [7 favorites]
The other interesting thing, is how Jones viewed queerness, and how like he used AFrican American liberaiton politics to further his cause, he also used nascent queer liberation to gain social tracition. For example, sending busloads of supporters to canvas and vote for Milk.
posted by PinkMoose at 9:07 PM on December 27, 2018
posted by PinkMoose at 9:07 PM on December 27, 2018
The Black Hole of Guyana
The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre
by John Judge
1985
posted by bukvich at 9:19 PM on December 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre
by John Judge
1985
posted by bukvich at 9:19 PM on December 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
I read this article on Politico, written by a Congressional aid to Leo Ryan (CA, San Francisco) last month which drove home how awful the whole thing was. Rep. Ryan was killed, apparently as a lead up to the massacre itself.
Rep. Speier survived and has a book out: Undaunted: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage and Fighting Back.
posted by fiercekitten at 11:43 PM on December 27, 2018 [4 favorites]
Rep. Speier survived and has a book out: Undaunted: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage and Fighting Back.
posted by fiercekitten at 11:43 PM on December 27, 2018 [4 favorites]
Another fantastic recent article: The Jonestown We Don’t Know by Gaiutra Bahadur.
posted by Tiny Bungalow at 2:07 AM on December 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Tiny Bungalow at 2:07 AM on December 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
I recently listened to the Fresh Air podcast about Jim Jones. They focused very heavily on his civil rights background and how that influenced his followers. They also played a tape of Jones urging people to drink the Flavorade ("Kool-Aid would have been too much of a luxury") -- it was chilling.
posted by basalganglia at 4:58 AM on December 28, 2018
posted by basalganglia at 4:58 AM on December 28, 2018
I swear the miniseries I saw about Jonestown in the nineties made the point about the African American base of the temple but I guess that was a very long time ago.
posted by winna at 5:51 AM on December 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by winna at 5:51 AM on December 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
Quite curious about the age groups of people who didn't know about the racial aspect - I was aware of the desegregation line in a very superficial way, but I suppose I assumed it was just part of Jones's spiel; had no idea how many members of the actual Temple were WOC for example.
I'm pushing forty and pretty sure the superficial research shaping my understanding of this was done in my teens, so I was too young to have seen it on TV but wouldn't have had real internet access yet. Any images I saw were black and white, but I also don't think the demographics of the group were discussed much. And in the eighties and nineties all the cults I was aware of were white separatist-type operations.
Anyway, if you were old enough to have seen it on TV, was the racial makeup of Temple members discussed? If you first read about it on Wikipedia I assume the demographics section of that page has been there for a while, but now I'm kinda curious about digging back to see when it was created.
I'm curious to what extent my perceptions were shaped by the media versus my own assumptions.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:50 AM on December 28, 2018
I'm pushing forty and pretty sure the superficial research shaping my understanding of this was done in my teens, so I was too young to have seen it on TV but wouldn't have had real internet access yet. Any images I saw were black and white, but I also don't think the demographics of the group were discussed much. And in the eighties and nineties all the cults I was aware of were white separatist-type operations.
Anyway, if you were old enough to have seen it on TV, was the racial makeup of Temple members discussed? If you first read about it on Wikipedia I assume the demographics section of that page has been there for a while, but now I'm kinda curious about digging back to see when it was created.
I'm curious to what extent my perceptions were shaped by the media versus my own assumptions.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:50 AM on December 28, 2018
PBS documentary on Jonestown
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 6:52 AM on December 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 6:52 AM on December 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
I read Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People which was written by one of the reporters who survived the airport attack on Leo Ryan. It was quite exhaustive and illuminating. He goes into great detail about Jones' civil rights background and the racial makeup of the church.
One thing that he points out, and which cannot be understated, was that while the majority of parishioners were black, the vast majority of Jones' inner circle were made up of white professionals. They represented the Temple to the public, they made all the major decisions. They were absolutely exploiting their black members, even if some of them believed that they were doing good.
If you listen to the tapes made before the murder/suicides were carried out, you'll hear Jones arguing with Christine Miller. Miller was a black woman and an outspoken voice in the community. She regularly opposed Jones as he became more and more unstable.
Even as Jones is going on about how all is lost and death is the only solution, Miller keeps trying to find solutions and alternatives. She fights him to the very end and it's heartbreaking the hear, because she is just so passionate and desperate in the face of his madness.
posted by Laura Palmer's Cold Dead Kiss at 7:08 AM on December 28, 2018 [21 favorites]
One thing that he points out, and which cannot be understated, was that while the majority of parishioners were black, the vast majority of Jones' inner circle were made up of white professionals. They represented the Temple to the public, they made all the major decisions. They were absolutely exploiting their black members, even if some of them believed that they were doing good.
If you listen to the tapes made before the murder/suicides were carried out, you'll hear Jones arguing with Christine Miller. Miller was a black woman and an outspoken voice in the community. She regularly opposed Jones as he became more and more unstable.
Even as Jones is going on about how all is lost and death is the only solution, Miller keeps trying to find solutions and alternatives. She fights him to the very end and it's heartbreaking the hear, because she is just so passionate and desperate in the face of his madness.
posted by Laura Palmer's Cold Dead Kiss at 7:08 AM on December 28, 2018 [21 favorites]
The thing is, King isn't saying that nobody has ever acknowledged that most of Jones's followers were black. She's saying that discussions of Jonestown have tended to center the perspectives of white people. Black people have become anonymous, undifferentiated victims. The names that people know are the names of white people: Jones himself, white victims like Leo Ryan, white survivors like Jackie Speier. Black people, who were the majority of those who died at Jonestown, are present as bloated corpses, as voices screaming in agony on recordings. (Do you think they'd have shown those pictures and played those tapes on the radio if most of the people in them had been white? Maybe, but I have doubts.) What the Alternative Considerations archive and King are trying to do is give Jones's black followers back their identities, and with it their dignity. So King builds the article around her mother's friend, Francine Mason who died at Jonestown along with her partner Eddie Hallmon and their one-year-old son, Tiquan. It's not that she's telling a brand new story. It's that she wants to shift the focus away from public figures and to the typical victims and the communities and families they left behind.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:33 AM on December 28, 2018 [35 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:33 AM on December 28, 2018 [35 favorites]
I turn 50 next year and grew up in NYC, and even before I moved to Oakland I grew up knowing of the People's Temple as a cult with black membership and a white charismatic leader. Given that Sunday is considered to be one of the most segregated days of the week in America, a white preacher leading a black congregation stood out.
Blows my mind that people perceived TPT as other than majority black. I'm surprised to learn there were that many white members. I've always seen Jim Jones as a lone white face in a crowd of POC. That upwards of 25% of the cult was white is something I just learned.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 7:36 AM on December 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Blows my mind that people perceived TPT as other than majority black. I'm surprised to learn there were that many white members. I've always seen Jim Jones as a lone white face in a crowd of POC. That upwards of 25% of the cult was white is something I just learned.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 7:36 AM on December 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm black and have an interest in the subject that is likely higher than average, but the demographics of Jonestown and its origin in civil rights never escaped me - one of the haunting things about it is that a beautiful vision died that day that a lot of those people earnestly believed in. That being said, I have learned more recently about how there was an internal hierarchy that put the members with more money, education, social credibility, and physical appeal to Jones on top that clearly replicated the racial hierarchy members were trying to escape.
posted by Selena777 at 7:37 AM on December 28, 2018 [13 favorites]
posted by Selena777 at 7:37 AM on December 28, 2018 [13 favorites]
I was about fourteen when it happened, and I can verify that really no media attention was given to the victims, aside from referring to them as "cultists" and assuming that they all committed suicide willingly. That made for a better story, the idea that all those people could come under the sway of a charismatic madman and kill themselves when he snapped his fingers. If you'd asked me what mental images came to my mind when thinking about Jonestown, I'd probably say Jones, Leo Ryan, and a whole lot of bodies lying in the jungle.
Also, WRT white saviorism: the white savior industrial complex, previously on the blue.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:12 AM on December 28, 2018 [9 favorites]
Also, WRT white saviorism: the white savior industrial complex, previously on the blue.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:12 AM on December 28, 2018 [9 favorites]
Thank you for posting this. I have a strong interest in the macarbe, cults, and social justice topics. Naturally Jonestown is a fascinating and difficult mix of the three.
In response to some of the questions above wrt knowledge about the racial make up of TPT, I'm a mid twenties British girl, and most of my knowledge comes from the internet rather than TV or news reports. That disclaimer aside, when I first learnt about Jonestown (maybe in my early to mid teens) race wasn't even mentioned. My understanding was fairly superficial, and focused on the 'final days' but the racial element was barely mentioned. It was made very clear that most people were forced to take the poison, and that even if that was impossible to say for sure that there were hundreds of children who were definitely murdered. Revisiting the subject in my late teens, I learnt more about the socjus elements to Jones' teachings, Nd how they attracted people. I can't remember it being made obvious, but even with black and white photos I somehow was under the impression that primarily his white parishioners went to Guyana while the black remained in the USA.
My most recent dive into TPT has focused much more on it's beginnings: like people have mentioned upthread I have been trying to unpick if Jones was ever 'really' for the causes he spoke about or if they were just feeding his narcissism. This included a much clearer appraisal of him as, frankly, a standard cult leader who was only in it for his own gratification. The plans to leave for Guyana weren't about making a new socialist community, they were about evading prosecution for stealing people's children, and abusing his followers in numerous ways.
However, all this never made it clear to me just how many of his followers and how many of the people he murdered were black women and children. Thank you for posting this, I hope we can learn from Jones with regards to how abusers will style themselves as leftists for social capital and personal gain.
posted by Braeburn at 10:03 AM on December 28, 2018 [7 favorites]
In response to some of the questions above wrt knowledge about the racial make up of TPT, I'm a mid twenties British girl, and most of my knowledge comes from the internet rather than TV or news reports. That disclaimer aside, when I first learnt about Jonestown (maybe in my early to mid teens) race wasn't even mentioned. My understanding was fairly superficial, and focused on the 'final days' but the racial element was barely mentioned. It was made very clear that most people were forced to take the poison, and that even if that was impossible to say for sure that there were hundreds of children who were definitely murdered. Revisiting the subject in my late teens, I learnt more about the socjus elements to Jones' teachings, Nd how they attracted people. I can't remember it being made obvious, but even with black and white photos I somehow was under the impression that primarily his white parishioners went to Guyana while the black remained in the USA.
My most recent dive into TPT has focused much more on it's beginnings: like people have mentioned upthread I have been trying to unpick if Jones was ever 'really' for the causes he spoke about or if they were just feeding his narcissism. This included a much clearer appraisal of him as, frankly, a standard cult leader who was only in it for his own gratification. The plans to leave for Guyana weren't about making a new socialist community, they were about evading prosecution for stealing people's children, and abusing his followers in numerous ways.
However, all this never made it clear to me just how many of his followers and how many of the people he murdered were black women and children. Thank you for posting this, I hope we can learn from Jones with regards to how abusers will style themselves as leftists for social capital and personal gain.
posted by Braeburn at 10:03 AM on December 28, 2018 [7 favorites]
I vividly remember the front page of The Chicago Tribune - with portraits of Jonestown victims. I found it but it needs a subscription to view (scroll down to Sunday, November 11, 1979).
posted by maggiemaggie at 10:25 AM on December 28, 2018
posted by maggiemaggie at 10:25 AM on December 28, 2018
Not to abuse the edit window, but that Chicago Tribune is from a year after the massacre. Still, it has haunted me ever since seeing it and is what come into my head whenever I hear about Jonestown.
posted by maggiemaggie at 10:31 AM on December 28, 2018
posted by maggiemaggie at 10:31 AM on December 28, 2018
I recently moved to Western Addition, and I've made it a hobby to understand the rich history. I'm from Texas, and was surprised Jonestown had roots only a few blocks away. Last month there was a Day of Atonement for Jonestown.
posted by politikitty at 12:18 PM on December 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by politikitty at 12:18 PM on December 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
I was in Nigeria doing my Youth Service at the time and read about it in, I think, longform reports in Time and Newsweek. Race wasn't mentioned but given the photographs it didn't need to be, the photos made the racial mix and the racist hierarchy eminently clear. Also I seem to remember children in care in San Francisco and other vulnerable people had been handed over to the PT for welfare reasons by the city authorities, which action effectively condemned them to death. And that this handing over continued even after reports of abuse within the cult had begun to circulate.
I mean, my memory of the reporting I had access to at that time is that it clearly portrayed Jones as a narcissistic delusional scam artist who had conned his way, under the guise of utopia-driven social welfare pretensions, into being in charge of a large enough group of vulnerable people to form them into a (forced) cult. I mean that was just so obvious from the pictures, and the biographies, and the time line, since the massacre kicked off due to the senator's visit. It's surprising to me to learn that the story in popular culture now is so different to what we gathered from the news then.
I remember the initial reports when news helicopters were flying over the compound called it a mass suicide but the wording and the tone of the reports changed pretty quickly once journalists got to grips with what had happened. I've not read up on Jonestown since and seem to have retained quite a lot of info about it. They were gruesome and poignant pictures, and the reporting was graphic as the reporters had listened to the tapes. I remember one survivor was an old lady who'd been asleep when the call to assembly came and no one wanted to wake her. Can you imagine waking up to the circumstance she did in the end, when it was over?
So yes, what an act of erasure that this has been forgotten and very much needed reclamation work being done here by Jamilah King.
posted by glasseyes at 1:23 PM on December 28, 2018 [11 favorites]
I mean, my memory of the reporting I had access to at that time is that it clearly portrayed Jones as a narcissistic delusional scam artist who had conned his way, under the guise of utopia-driven social welfare pretensions, into being in charge of a large enough group of vulnerable people to form them into a (forced) cult. I mean that was just so obvious from the pictures, and the biographies, and the time line, since the massacre kicked off due to the senator's visit. It's surprising to me to learn that the story in popular culture now is so different to what we gathered from the news then.
I remember the initial reports when news helicopters were flying over the compound called it a mass suicide but the wording and the tone of the reports changed pretty quickly once journalists got to grips with what had happened. I've not read up on Jonestown since and seem to have retained quite a lot of info about it. They were gruesome and poignant pictures, and the reporting was graphic as the reporters had listened to the tapes. I remember one survivor was an old lady who'd been asleep when the call to assembly came and no one wanted to wake her. Can you imagine waking up to the circumstance she did in the end, when it was over?
So yes, what an act of erasure that this has been forgotten and very much needed reclamation work being done here by Jamilah King.
posted by glasseyes at 1:23 PM on December 28, 2018 [11 favorites]
Oh my god, something else I just remembered which I wish I hadn't - they poisoned the children first to make sure the adults were more likely to comply
posted by glasseyes at 1:25 PM on December 28, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by glasseyes at 1:25 PM on December 28, 2018 [6 favorites]
Tiny Bungalow: Another fantastic recent article: The Jonestown We Don’t Know by Gaiutra Bahadur.
Thank you for linking that. I feel like this is an important quote to pull out of that piece:
Literally unseen that fateful night, to her great good fortune, was Hyacinth Thrash, a seventy-six-year-old African-American woman born in the Jim Crow South who had crossed decades and distances with the preacher, from Indiana in 1957 to Guyana in 1978. On the night of the suicides, she did not respond to the loudspeaker summons to the settlement’s central pavilion where her sister Zipporah, along with the rest, would either drink or be injected with a lethal purple brew of Flavor Aid, cyanide, and tranquilizers. Thrash, who used a cane, wasn’t feeling up to the walk. That night, unaware of what was unfolding, she stayed in bed. For an unknown stretch of time, perturbed by noises outside, she crawled beneath her bed. She was either hidden under it or camouflaged in sleep, with the covers pulled over her, when Jones’s deputies came through the senior citizen dormitories delivering the poison to those too frail or weary to make it to the final ceremony. The next morning, she awoke to stillness and the epiphany that she was the apparent sole survivor, “The Onliest One Alive,” as the self-published book that relates her story—a little-known oral history collected and edited by a white Presbyterian church elder in Indiana—is titled. Thrash, it turned out, was one of four people actually at the settlement that final night, in the physical thrall of Jim Jones, who did not die. All four were black.
Yet, of the many books about Jonestown published by People’s Temple attorneys, defectors, survivors, members, or their relatives, in no case was the author an African American. There have been more than seventy-five published accounts of Jonestown—by People’s Temple insiders as well as US reporters, several canonical West Indian novelists, a Caribbean historian, a medic sent to the scene, a San Francisco radical poet, a ghostwriter for televangelists, and a child safety expert (a third of the dead were children). The “survivor” accounts were written by white people, although most of the dead and all of the survivors were black. Indeed, the historiography around Jonestown would seem to confirm Thrash’s observation about her education in a small town along the railroad tracks in segregated Alabama. “Books,” she said, “were cast-offs from the white school. Stories was all about white children. History was all white.”
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:57 PM on December 28, 2018 [21 favorites]
Thank you for linking that. I feel like this is an important quote to pull out of that piece:
Literally unseen that fateful night, to her great good fortune, was Hyacinth Thrash, a seventy-six-year-old African-American woman born in the Jim Crow South who had crossed decades and distances with the preacher, from Indiana in 1957 to Guyana in 1978. On the night of the suicides, she did not respond to the loudspeaker summons to the settlement’s central pavilion where her sister Zipporah, along with the rest, would either drink or be injected with a lethal purple brew of Flavor Aid, cyanide, and tranquilizers. Thrash, who used a cane, wasn’t feeling up to the walk. That night, unaware of what was unfolding, she stayed in bed. For an unknown stretch of time, perturbed by noises outside, she crawled beneath her bed. She was either hidden under it or camouflaged in sleep, with the covers pulled over her, when Jones’s deputies came through the senior citizen dormitories delivering the poison to those too frail or weary to make it to the final ceremony. The next morning, she awoke to stillness and the epiphany that she was the apparent sole survivor, “The Onliest One Alive,” as the self-published book that relates her story—a little-known oral history collected and edited by a white Presbyterian church elder in Indiana—is titled. Thrash, it turned out, was one of four people actually at the settlement that final night, in the physical thrall of Jim Jones, who did not die. All four were black.
Yet, of the many books about Jonestown published by People’s Temple attorneys, defectors, survivors, members, or their relatives, in no case was the author an African American. There have been more than seventy-five published accounts of Jonestown—by People’s Temple insiders as well as US reporters, several canonical West Indian novelists, a Caribbean historian, a medic sent to the scene, a San Francisco radical poet, a ghostwriter for televangelists, and a child safety expert (a third of the dead were children). The “survivor” accounts were written by white people, although most of the dead and all of the survivors were black. Indeed, the historiography around Jonestown would seem to confirm Thrash’s observation about her education in a small town along the railroad tracks in segregated Alabama. “Books,” she said, “were cast-offs from the white school. Stories was all about white children. History was all white.”
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:57 PM on December 28, 2018 [21 favorites]
To prevent the erasure of WOC, there is the 2008 memoir by Leslie Wagner Wilson. She was one the few that escaped. She walked twenty miles through the jungle. Completely coincidentally I finally watched the newest documentary last night. It’s devastating that she was the only survivor able to save her child. And it was pure luck she was able to get her child away from his caretaker. She had to leave her husband and other family behind.
posted by politikitty at 3:46 PM on December 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by politikitty at 3:46 PM on December 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
I mean, my memory of the reporting I had access to at that time is that it clearly portrayed Jones as a narcissistic delusional scam artist who had conned his way, under the guise of utopia-driven social welfare pretensions, into being in charge of a large enough group of vulnerable people to form them into a (forced) cult.I think, though, that this is a little bit what King is pushing back against. It's a way of telling the story of the People's Temple that makes Jones the protagonist and the only person with agency. The black people who joined the People's Temple aren't actors at all, if you tell it this way. They are "vulnerable people" who are "formed" into a cult. They were acted upon. And what she's saying, I think, is that most of them chose to join the People's Temple, although they very well may not have chosen to stay in it after they got to Guyana. Jones preached things that appealed to them, not because they were "vulnerable" dupes, but because they were searching for things that they legitimately could not get from the society in which they lived. And they found things in the People's Temple, which may have owed more to each other than to Jones, but which were real. Acknowledging that doesn't diminish the tragedy, and it doesn't minimize Jones's guilt. It just allows his followers to be fully human, and to have made choices, and to have made choices that are understandable and human.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:05 PM on December 28, 2018 [24 favorites]
My family went to New York City for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in 1978. I was 14. Every time we left the hotel the headlines showed a higher and higher body count as they found more and more people.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:22 PM on December 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by kirkaracha at 9:22 PM on December 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
I recently read 'The Road to Jonestown', and one of the things which struck me was that, in that time and place, I could see myself joining the People's Temple. I suspect I have some deeply ingrained White Saviour Complex, but I think that mainly it's comparing what Jones was preaching (and to all outside appearances, actually putting into practice) to the reality on the ground at that point. The abuses and failures were relatively well-hidden.
I think this project is wonderful.
posted by Vortisaur at 3:46 AM on December 29, 2018 [2 favorites]
I think this project is wonderful.
posted by Vortisaur at 3:46 AM on December 29, 2018 [2 favorites]
The 1980 TV mini-series starring Powers Boothe and Levar Burton made a lasting impression on me as a child, and in my memory it did a decent job reflecting the demographics of the church (though it did focus largely on Jones and a few of the white higher-ups in the group.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:14 PM on December 30, 2018
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:14 PM on December 30, 2018
kirkaracha: My family went to New York City for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in 1978. I was 14. Every time we left the hotel the headlines showed a higher and higher body count as they found more and more people.
My dad was out camping during the initial incident, so as he was driving home they kept breaking into the radio programming to report the latest death count, but they never gave the background because everyone knew, so it was just this creepy abstract disaster who knew where.
posted by tavella at 8:53 PM on December 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
My dad was out camping during the initial incident, so as he was driving home they kept breaking into the radio programming to report the latest death count, but they never gave the background because everyone knew, so it was just this creepy abstract disaster who knew where.
posted by tavella at 8:53 PM on December 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
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