Jim Jones: Progressive to Predator

Jim Jones leader of the People's Temple has come to symbolize the ultimate in sleazy evil cult figures through a forceful personality charm and genuine good works he managed to draw a massive following and lead them like a modern-day Pied Piper to the jungles of Guyana there he promised them a modern-day Garden of Eden what they found was confinement mental and physical control and enforced suicide in this week's by graphics we dive into the life of the real Jim Jones James Warren Jones was born on May the 13th 1931 to lanessa Putnam and Jim Jones senior in Crete Indiana the older Jim was a disabled War veteran then Atta was some 15 years younger than her husband and the marriage was not a happy one Jim was often away working on road crews leaving Lunetta isolated and lonely in Crete she certainly didn't help her cause though with her unsocial manner she smoked cursed and voiced obtuse opinions at every opportunity Mineta had never wanted to be a mother the addition of a child to the family only increased the stress the Jones were facing shortly after the child's birth Jim suffered a complete nervous breakdown unable to work any longer the finances became dire leading to their eviction from the family farm the homeless family were taken in by Jim's relatives in the small town of Lynn Indiana Lynn was a conservative orderly town with the vast majority of the townspeople of being churchgoers the town also had a prominent Ku Klux Klan membership the Joneses lived in a derelict Shack that lacked plumbing when young Jim began school at the age of six his mother took a factory job this provided the child with the freedom of before and after school to roam the streets he was a needy child who was terrified of his father finding it difficult to make friends he spent a lot of time alone reading often the child could be seen wandering around town looking disconsolate elderly widows around town felt sympathy for the young wife and would invite him in for a piece of cake the boy was so polite that he soon won them over it was through one of these local matriarchs that Jim got his first exposure to religion by the way of the Church of NASA Jim was constantly attentive even quoting scripture back to the elderly woman to his mother's ambivalence Jim began attending church with the old woman he hung on every word coming from the preacher's mouth he also showed an amazing ability to recite sermons and quote lengthy biblical verses but Jim was not exclusively committed to the Church of Nazarene his natural inquisitiveness caused him to attend every denomination in town during the week he would wander into the woods and prop himself up on a stump where he would proceed to deliver fiery sermons of his own to the local forest animals this was pretty far outside of a Normand was just one reason why people would remember young Jim Jones as a weird kid his great interest in religion led to an equally obsessive fascination with death there were also other things that set Jim apart from the other kids in Lynn he cried a lot and he also swore far too much he would also steal candy from the local store further his odd religious obsession led him to come out with all sorts of strange things such as that he was being held down by the Angel of Death by the age of nine Jim was claiming that he had special powers one day he climbs on a roof and called down for everyone to watch him fly cattle vaulting himself from the roof he promptly fell to the ground and broke his arm about that same time Jim took to wandering around town and collecting roadkill in order to give each dead animal and elaborate funeral the other kids looked on to this with a morbid fascination Jim was 10 years old when America entered the Second World War while all of his schoolmates spent their recess playing as Marines or GIS he insisted on playing the Nazis particularly their leader Adolf Hitler with whom he was absolutely enraptured he even went so far as recruiting younger children and telling them into mini stormtroopers when they did not do step high enough he would whack them with a twig when he became a teenager Jim's new favorite topic changed from religion to sex he established himself as the young people's authority on the subject and would set up court on his porch to teach the facts of life in minut detail to a near audience his mother was happy for him to share his dubious knowledge but the parents of the other children well they were rather incensed at high school Jim set himself apart not just by his strange beliefs and by his strange actions but also his dress rather than the casual dress that was normal he wore his Sunday best every single day he also never spoke unless he instigated the conversation however he did love to engage his teachers in debates attempting to highlight his superior intellect now although not in any sense a talented sportsman Jim was an exceptional organizer at the age of 14 he established a baseball league but during one team meeting some kids saw Jim drop a pet dog from his loft to its death after that the players they became scared of him and the league fell apart by the early 1940s Jim senior had become a hopeless alcoholic his body was now ruined and he had suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak legibly lanessa took another man a secret that was not so secret in the small town inevitably the marriage irrevocably broke apart and Jim and lanessa were divorced in 1945 lanessa took Jim and moved to Richmond Indiana while attending high school Jim worked the night shift as an orderly at the Reed Memorial Hospital in December of 1948 he graduated with honors which was quite an accomplishment for a 17-year old who was also working a full time job [Music] it was while working at Reed memorial that Jim met quartered and fell in love with a young nurse by the name of Marceline Baldwin Marceline was entranced by Jenna who was four years her junior and the couple were married in 1949 together they moved to Indianapolis Indiana in Bloomington Marceline found work as a nurse while her husband attended but the University the couple they now found themselves living in the heart of Ku Klux Klan country and it was in the midst of this redneck country that Jim developed a passion for two things racial integration and socialism in the spring of 1952 Jim accepted a position as student pastor at Somerset Methodist Church he excelled in the role and quickly set up a Youth Center which was open to children of all faiths he soon recognized that the way to attract crowds and therefore to increased church donations was to adopt a flamboyant Pentecostal style and make faith healing a central part of his performances these performances began to gather wider attention and before long he was being invited to preach at conventions and assemblies throughout Indiana and the surrounding states regular services were held at Elmwood temple in Cincinnati Ohio where he would invite those suffering from ailments to come forward for the laying on of hands he even traveled as far afield as Los Angeles to participate in a healing convention by the mid 1950s Jones was filling the churches with his traumatic healing sermons at each one he insisted that the audience be completely integrated and that black members of the congregation set up front facts which further ingratiated him to local black people it was his insistence on racial integration within his flock that led to a split with Jim's church employer churches in Indianapolis at the time were strictly segregated and Jim's allowance of blacks was causing real problems Jim he quit and discussed and set up his own community unity Church this soon morphed into wings of deliverance which was renamed in 1955 as the People's Temple Full Gospel Church from the start Peoples Temple grew large crowds of both black and white parishioners the healing dramas were still the highlight of every sermon but Jim's prime concern appeared to be building a truly racially integrated ministry in recognition of his efforts to achieve racial harmony Jim was appointed in 1960 by Indianapolis mayor Charles Boswell the mayor has intended his role to be low profile but Jim immediately took to the limelight appearing on TV and radio programs dramatically proclaiming let my people go Jones threw himself into the civil rights movement through his efforts of churches restaurants amusement parks and movie theaters they were all integrated in 1961 Jim collapsed as a result of over exhaustion he was mistakenly taken to a black Hospital but when the mistake was identified he refused to move he even took to making the beds and emptying the bedpans sick black people in the wards this caused publicity which directly led to pressure on hospital authorities to desegregate the wards now not surprisingly whites controlled churches and businesses were highly critical of this upstart preacher who dared to challenge the status quo threats were received a swastika was painted on the wall of the People's Temple church building and a dead cat was tossed at Jim's house throughout the 1960s the Joneses adopted three children of Korean descent Jim referred to these children as his rainbow family in an attempt to extend the rainbow family he also encouraged members of his congregation to likewise adopt war-torn refugees now in the early 1960s Jim he became obsessed with the prospect of a nuclear holocaust in December of 1961 he announced to his congregation that he had a prophetic dream in which the entire American Midwest had been destroyed in a nuclear conflagration after reading a magazine article entitled nine places in the world to hide he took his young family on a trip to one of them Belo Horizonte in Brazil they stayed there for two years during this time his distrust and personal hatred towards the government of the United States intensified he was convinced that American political and economic self-interest had brought the world to the brink of destruction the drains is returned to Indianapolis December of 1963 Jim immediately made plans to move his congregation who had been waiting patiently for their leaders return to another of the nine safe places on the list Northern California in the summer of 1964 the family along with about a hundred and forty congregants moved to the town of Ukiah in the Redwood Valley area above San Francisco over the next few months church services were held in rented church buildings and then at a ranch at Ridgewood throughout the week Jim worked as a high school teacher after three years of steadily building up its membership for Peoples Temple was granted official standing by the Christian Church disciples of Christ Northern California Nevada region in 1968 the following February the People's Temple Redwood Valley Complex opens the complex included the Joneses home a swimming pool childcare center old folks homes the temple meeting place and a ranch all of this of course was completely integrated this little Garden of Eden sat in the middle of a strictly segregated Redwood Valley within a year the People's Temple had expanded into San Francisco buses were put on to transport new parishioners there to Redwood Valley for weekend services Jim also took to the road by bus touring from one city to the next winning new converts in each place many of which were so captivated by the charismatic preacher that they moved to the Redwood Valley Ranch people's temple experienced rapid expansion during the 1970s however it was also during this time that the church received its first negative media coverage a series of articles in the San Francisco Examiner profiled the church painting Jones as a false messiah who had claimed to bring 43 people back from the debt the authority structure of the Church was also put under the spotlight the examiner articles drew the interest of other media outlets from then on Jones came to view the media as the enemy and an agent of the devil himself things got worse when in 1973 eight prominent members of the Peoples Temple defected stories emerged of financial abuse mind control and tax evasion in response to the pressure brought upon the church by the media and the defectors Jim first proposed the idea of mass suicide such a grand action would establish the congruence as martyrs and shame those who were out to get them as for how however Jones's words were nothing more than bluster it was during the summer of 1973 that Jones made the decision to relocate the People's Temple to the South American country of Guyana two months later he visited the country in order to open negotiations to purchase 27 thousand acres of land in the Mathieu Ridge area near the Venezuelan border the Guyanese co-operative Republic was a socialist country and for Jones who had passed through on his return trip from Brazil in 1963 it was an ideal haven the first People's Temple members arrived in Guyana in March of 1974 to begin the mammoth task of clearing the jungle and breaking grounds for construction on what was to become Jonestown a year later there were 50 Peoples Temple pioneers in Guyana day and night they worked to construct buildings and establish a massive agricultural project by 1977 Jonestown was an established community but things were getting worse back in California on Memorial Day 1977 along with 600 congregation members Jones made an appearance at a commemoration for suicides who had jumped off San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge in his address on this day he declared I have been in a suicidal mood myself today so I have personal empathy for what we are doing here today by now there was renewed pressure on the church from the American media on August the 1st 1977 an article appeared in you west magazine that alleged members had been beaten the church was rife with financial Mis dealings and that Jim Jones was nothing more than a charlatan by the time the article hit the newsstands James was already in Guyana by September there were more than a thousand people's temple members in Guyana with only about 50 or so left in the United States the sudden influx of people placed severe strain on the facilities of Jonestown however members enthusiastically pitched in to extend the village in order to accommodate the demand three-quarters of the transplanted residents were black with the remainder being white Hispanic Asian and Native American the task of feeding housing and clothing the community was a massive undertaking but the temple members found a great sense of pride in the feat that they were accomplishing a utopian heaven on earth despite the harsh conditions in the hard work the people appeared in those first few months to be genuinely happy back in California former members began a concerted attack on the People's Temple a woman who had borne a child - Jones sued for custody of the child's which was living at the commune Jones refused to even consider giving up the child declaring that any attempt to take the child would put the life of every member of the People's Temple in jeopardy still other defectors who had left children behind also sued for custody following this a declaration of human rights violations committed by Peoples Temple were issued by defectors to the media it included the assertion that rehearsals for mass suicide often took place at people's temple a committee of concerned relatives claims that Jonestown was little more than a concentration camp with armed guards constantly patrolling and the residents continually subjected to brainwashing forced labor and sleep deprivation attempts were made to pressure Congress to establish an official investigation of Jonestown the challenge was taken up by congressman Leo Ryan representing the San Mateo district of Northern California Ryan had determined to lead a fact-finding mission to Jonestown in order to find out firsthand what was going on there with reporters and relatives in tow he flew into the airport at nearby Georgetown on November the 15th 1978 two days later they flew to the airstrip at chi tumor and then were driven by limousine into the jungle towards Jonestown Jones had been preparing the temple members for the congressman's visit for weeks every member knew that gods were watching their every move they were commanded to portray a glorious utopian society role plays were conducted in which the members were told exactly what to say when spoken to you by reporters any signs of dissatisfaction would be harshly dealt with away from prying eyes the congressman was warmly welcomed into reception was held that first night Ryan seemed genuinely impressed with the organization and the order that he saw but late into the night one of the reporters who had come along with him was secretly passed a note from a man in the crowd the man he wanted to leave with the congressman the next morning the reporter showed the note of the congressman Ryan brought the issue up with Jones who declared that anyone was free to come or go as they pleased this prompted Ryan's you make a public declaration that anyone who wanted to leave with him at the end of the weekend was most welcome over that weekend many people came forward then on the afternoon of the second day of the visit a People's Temple member lunged at congressman Ryan with a knife this event soured the proceedings and the visitors were intent on getting out as fast as possible [Music] when the congressman's party left there were 14 people's temple members with them they got into two trucks and were driven back to the airstrip however almost immediately after they left Jen's ordered a tractor and trailer manned by armed bodyguards to follow them just as the congressman reporters and evacuees were about to board the plane and head back to the safety of the United States the truck and tractor rolled onto the airstrip it was at this point that Jones's guards immediately opened fire with submachine guns congressman Ryan and four others were killed then one of these supposed to defectors pulled out a handgun and began shooting at those who had already made their way onto one of the two waiting planes the leader of the killer guards immediately radioed back to Jones and told them that the congressman was dead it was at this point that Jones immediately began talking to his followers over a loudspeaker system he told them that the congressman had been killed and as a result the Soviet Union who we had been looking to for salvation would no longer take them in the Americans were now certain to send in armed forces to annihilate the People's Temple he drove fear into his followers by telling them Americans would torture their children raped their women and brutalized their old people the only dignified response he said was to commit mass revolutionary suicide [Music] we didn't commit to it I we can enact a revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an engine main world large barrels of cyanide laced kool-aid were rolled out and the people began lining up to lay down their lives in mass protest when he heard people trying to beg off Jones told them not to be afraid they were simply stepping over to another plane that day November the 18th 1978 nine hundred and fourteen members of the People's Temple lay down their lives Jones however did not succumb to the cyanide laced kool-aid he was found with a gunshot wound to his head it was determined as being self-inflicted so I really hope you enjoyed that bio graphics video if you did don't forget to subscribe to this channel for brand new biographies every Monday and Thursday also I've got another channel it's called top tens on that channel as you might have guessed from the name of it we look at all sorts of interesting top ten lists you can check it out through the link on the screen now but if you're looking for something else to watch right now why not check out a biography from the archives or indeed a top tens video over there on the right and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Biographics

Views: 1,295,226

Keywords: jim jones, who was jim jones, what happened to jim jones, koolaid, drink the koolaid, peoples temple, biography of jim jones, jim jones death, peoples temple jim jones, jim jones life, jim jones biography

Id: UVSrfXkoKNw

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Thu May 17 2018