November 18, 1978: The Jonestown Massacre

November 18, 1978, 40 years ago: The Jonestown Massacre takes place. When I was a kid, there were 3 stories that really freaked me out: The Son of Sam case, the Three Mile Island nuclear plant meltdown, and the Jonestown story.

James Warren Jones was born on May 13, 1931 in Crete, Indiana, a small town just west of the State Line with Ohio, thus about halfway between the capitals of Indianapolis and Columbus. He became a Pentecostal minister, and founded what would become the Peoples Temple (note the lack of an apostrophe, a sign that it was for all peoples) in Indianapolis in 1955.

At a time and in a place when it was dangerous to do so -- Indiana was one of the few Northern States where the Ku Klux Klan made serious inroads -- the Rev. Jim Jones reached out to black people and supported civil rights causes.

In 1965, he moved his organization to San Francisco, and became involved with charities and political groups there. He preached what he called "Apostolic Socialism," probably safer to do in traditionally leftist San Francisco than in any other American city.

He helped to get George Moscone elected Mayor in 1975, and also built alliances with City Supervisor Harvey Milk (America's 1st openly gay elected public official), Assemblyman Willie Brown (later to be Mayor himself), and even Governor Jerry Brown. He even met First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who spoke well of him.

But he had spent years with a paranoia building inside him. His move to California brought him into contact with drugs, which expanded his paranoia. He began thinking that the U.S. government was against him and his Temple.

He began to look to establish a colony elsewhere, and found it in the South American nation of Guyana. He brought many of his followers down with him to "Jonestown" -- some willingly, some by coercion. He said he was building a "socialist paradise." But by the Autumn of 1978, reports had reached America that there were human rights abuses in Jonestown, including some San Franciscans saying their family members were being held there against their will.

Leo Ryan, a Congressman whose District included many of the families, went to Guyana to investigate. He took some people who wanted to leave back to his plane. But before they could board, they were ambushed by gunmen. Ryan and 4 others were shot to death.

Jones knew that he couldn't get away with killing a Congressman. The game was up. And so, like so many cult leaders before him and after him, he decided that it was time to tell his followers that the end times had arrived. He served his followers Flavor Aid laced with cyanide. Some drank it willingly. Some did not. When it was over, 918 people, 304 of them children, were dead. Jones was 47 years old.

(It is from this story that the expression "drank the Kool-Aid," meaning "believed the ridiculous lie," came about, but it wasn't Kool-Aid, it was Flavor Aid.)

The story shocked the world. The story hit San Francisco particularly hard. As if that city hadn't been through enough over the years.

Things would get worse for San Francisco. The next week, there would be a double assassination, the assassin would come close to getting away with it, a deadly disease would devastate the city, and an earthquake that many feared would be "The Big One" would hit, all within the next 11 years.

Within a few months, there was a feature film, Guyana: Cult of the Damned, a fictionalized account, with Stuart Whitman as "Reverend James Johnson." In 1980, CBS aired the TV-movie The Guyana Tragedy, The Story of Jim Jones, starring Powers Boothe.