The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  Once the advance crew arrived, its members stayed with local supporters or guest church hosts. They spent each day passing out flyers in minority areas, often public housing projects and ghettos—ten thousand flyers might be handed out in a single day. Local media was contacted, too, including newspapers and radio stations specifically serving the black community. Reverend Jones was always available for a phone interview in advance of a public program.

  When the venue opened an hour or so in advance of Jones’s appearance at the pulpit, a Temple band and choir were already in place, expertly performing uplifting hymns. Audiences skewed toward black and poor, but there were white attendees, too.

  The healings were always a high point. By now they were presented in particularly compelling fashion. Besides utilizing his own accomplices, Jones now would sometimes call out a name from an index card, announcing that this person was perhaps unaware of a cancer in his or her system. A Temple “nurse” would be dispatched into the crowd to swab out the person’s throat in preparation for Jones’s healing effort. In the process, utilizing sleight of hand, a bit of chicken offal would be dropped into the mouth, and the natural gag reflex resulted in it being coughed back up. The nurse would brandish “the cancer”—Reverend Jones had caused it to be spit right out! A life had been saved! The Temple band played a fanfare, and Jones spoke eloquently of how the divine power flowed through him. Anything was possible for those who believed.

  After more songs, Jones cited scripture—away from Temple members-only meetings, he still quoted the Bible—and then moved on to his ultimate message. Unlike the selection of hymns and the number of healings, this rarely varied. Jones cited current events—there was always a recent race riot, another military atrocity in Vietnam, social or antiwar protesters being tear-gassed or beaten by police. An ominous sense of growing menace was palpable throughout the nation, and Jones took full advantage. He wasn’t the only one offering an extremist view of widespread, justifiable despair. Jones could, if he wished, quote Maine senator Edmund Muskie, who had emerged as a leading candidate for the Democratic Party’s next presidential nomination: “We have reached the point where men would rather die than live another day in America.” Jones reminded his mostly poor, predominantly minority audiences of the obvious threats to their well-being, particularly inherent racism that manifested itself in new, even more ominous ways: the election of Richard Nixon on a thinly veiled racist campaign theme of “law and order” (veteran political reporter Jules Witcover described it as “the politics of oppression, under the guise of patriotism”), the emergence of former Alabama governor George Wallace as a political force among angry whites. Black Americans were in danger from their own country as never before—and they weren’t the only ones. On May 4, 1970, four white students participating in a student antiwar demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio were shot and killed by members of the National Guard. Even white people of good conscience were at immediate risk if they refused to kowtow to warmongering, racist policies. Jones suggested that worse was coming. Concentration camps loomed in the near future for blacks and anyone else who attracted negative government notice. Beyond that, there was nothing to prevent government agencies from turning other forms of lethal attention toward anyone even suspected of opposition. Did anyone in the audience doubt it?

  Yet, there was a way out. In this nation full of violence and hatred and greed, Jones preached, the poor of all races and backgrounds must care for and help each other because no one else, especially the government, would. God helps those who help themselves. Singly, we are nothing. Together, with divine guidance and grace, all things are possible. Jones spoke to this for an hour or more, sometimes as long as two or three hours if he sensed the audience was amenable. He regaled listeners with tales of individuals who’d salvaged lost lives and found first refuge then complete fulfillment in Peoples Temple—why, some were present and gladly testified.

  Collections were taken at intervals. Everyone was urged to give what they could, and though Jones stressed it was no disgrace to be empty-handed, he also emphasized the responsibility for all to contribute whatever they could, from a penny to hundreds of dollars. All proceeds would be used to defray the cost of bringing the Peoples Temple spirit all the way here. Did everyone want him to come again soon? Generous donations would make that possible.

  Each program concluded with promises by Jones to pray for all present. They should contact Peoples Temple regarding any problem or personal emergency—their new friends cared. Special prayers would be offered—even long distance, the powers of Reverend Jones were potent. Everyone in the crowd was urged to hug all those around them—fellowship had been established, a union of the like-minded, everyone believing in, and now committed to, complete social and economic justice. Despite all the terrors of the outside world, they had each other, and Peoples Temple, and Jim Jones.

  Soon afterward the bus caravans were back on the highway, heading home to Redwood Valley. Often, an advance crew was already hundreds of miles away in some other direction, preparing for the next event. In Bus Number Seven, Jones and his entourage sipped chilled soft drinks and counted the day’s recent proceeds. They were succeeding on a scale that would have seemed impossible only a few years before.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  FAILURES

  Despite the gains realized by Peoples Temple—increased membership, growing coffers, a reputation extending beyond Mendocino County and even the West Coast—the years immediately following 1968 were not an uninterrupted series of triumphs. There were stumbles, some of them critical. Jones attempted so much that a significant percentage of failures was inevitable.

  It began with recruitment. As Temple departments and programs expanded, Jones needed an ever-larger pool of members. But they had to be the right kind of people—given the demands made on them, they needed to buy in completely to the idea of the Temple cause and the infallibility of its pastor. So the vetting process was extensive. Very few aspiring members were accepted on first visits, no matter how effusively they promised complete belief. Beyond their professed personal allegiance, Jones wanted to know more: What property or material possessions did they have to contribute to the cause, what skills that would lend themselves well to Temple efforts? Did they exhibit the potential for long-term commitment? First exposure to a Jones sermon or a Temple program might result in initial infatuation that soon dissipated. The idea was to welcome only those who could be counted on to stay.

  That meant that most visitors to the Temple in Redwood Valley or Jones’s road services didn’t become members. The percentage was perhaps one in ten. A great deal of time was spent weeding out undesirables, and even then there were always some who passed rigorous inspection and still didn’t live up to expectations. If they didn’t leave of their own accord, Jones dismissed them, declaring them lacking in true socialist faith, never suggesting that perhaps the Temple had failed in some way to meet their needs.

  Jones expected current members to proselytize with the rest of their relations—Temple fellowship included three generations of some families. Larry Layton was joined in Temple membership by his mother, Lisa, and younger sister Debbie, who brought with her a British friend named Phil Blakey. Phil, too, joined the Temple, and soon, with Jones’s encouragement, he and Debbie married—a marriage of convenience, so Blakey could get his green card and remain in the United States Carolyn Moore Layton wanted her parents and two younger sisters to join—Jones would particularly have relished adding a prominent Methodist minister like Rev. John Moore to the Temple fold—but Moore and his wife, Barbara, were greatly put off by what they perceived as worship of Jones himself rather than God. Carolyn’s sister Rebecca rejected Temple membership, too. She came to Redwood Valley, was given an extensive tour of Temple operations there, and was granted personal time with Jones. In contrast to his extroverted public persona, she found the private Jim Jones to be “low-key, a kind of depressing guy. For some reason, he decided he wouldn’t be ‘on’
for me.” Rebecca never attended a Temple service—she’d heard about Jones’s tendency to sermonize for hours. At the end of the visit, Rebecca made it clear she wasn’t interested in joining: “[Jones] claimed to be working to eliminate racism, but I thought it was odd that there was only one black [Archie Ijames] in the Temple leadership. I was already politically active, and I had no time for [Jones’s] bullshit.” But Annie, the youngest Moore daughter, was absolutely entranced. After graduating from high school, she joined the Temple and enrolled in nursing school.

  Jones also couldn’t prevent occasional tragedies involving members, even if one of the tenets of Peoples Temple was that a benefit of joining was coming under Father’s protection. He regularly announced “danger cycles” during which everyone should be especially cautious. If anything bad happened to a member during one of these, it only fulfilled Jones’s prophecy. If nothing did, then he was responsible due to his timely warning. Sometimes he announced specific acts everyone must undertake to avoid potential problems. Car wrecks would not happen to members who walked around their vehicles two times before getting in and starting the engine. Jones would press a photo of himself into the hand of a follower, and inform him or her that something awful had been going to happen—crippling or even death in an accident of some sort—but by possessing the picture, the follower was saved.

  Still, there were events that seemed to contradict Jones’s claims of protection. After a long night of Temple-related meetings, Joyce Swinney left Redwood Valley near dawn to drive to her job in Ukiah. She fell asleep at the wheel, ran into another car, and was killed. When Jones announced her death to a shocked congregation, he explained that it was Swinney’s own fault. He’d stopped her on her way out of the Redwood Valley church and told her that she needed to meditate for two full minutes before driving off. Swinney didn’t, and so she died. The glib spin control worked, but Jones had to be constantly on guard. Any incident beyond his control involving a member threatened his support within the Temple congregation.

  Not all Jones’s road expeditions worked out as planned, either. He received an invitation from an African American Baptist church in Houston to preach to its members. The reputation of Peoples Temple had spread almost two thousand miles to the South, and the Houston congregation wanted to hear what Jones had to say. When the Temple buses arrived, they were warmly welcomed, so much so that Jones failed to take his usual accurate reading of what would move a specific audience most. Assuming that he was addressing a crowd ready to buy into his most extreme pronouncements, Jones skipped his usual biblical references and launched into a diatribe against the U.S. government and a Sky God who was worshipped by deluded fools. When he declared that only socialism could prevent secular and spiritual disaster, church leaders stepped up to the pulpit and asked him to leave, taking his people with him. Jones went quietly, professing only deep respect for all involved. The Temple bus fleet headed back west, but at the first rest stop Jones gathered his followers together and told them that the black Houston Baptists had fallen under the control of the Ku Klux Klan. Since Father said so, they accepted it as fact.

  In October 1971, Jones and the Temple Greyhounds set out for Indiana. A visit to Indianapolis was irresistible. He was returning in triumph to the city where his ministry began, where he personally led the fight for integration and brought down racist traditions. Jones had never completely severed the Temple’s Indianapolis roots. Even after Peoples Temple moved to California, the church continued operating nursing homes in the city, and he had retained some followers there.

  Before Indianapolis came a stop in Lynn. Temple members gawked at the sight of Father’s old childhood haunts; he’d often regaled them with tales of his life there, mostly emphasizing his suffering at the hands of a tyrannical father and the pain of being part of the extended, racist Jones clan. None of these other Joneses came out to greet him, though several aunts, uncles, and cousins still lived in the area. If they’d heard he was coming, they had no interest in seeing him, and the disdain was mutual. Instead, Jones stopped the buses outside the home of Myrtle Kennedy, whom he introduced to his followers as his second mother. Jones’s first mother, Lynetta, would have bridled at the notion of any woman other than herself getting maternal credit, but she was back in California. Some of Jones’s old acquaintances came over to say hello. They were surprised when the buses moved along to a town gas station and Jones personally passed out rolls of toilet paper to followers who went inside to use the bathroom. One local, impressed by Jones and the procession, asked a Temple member how she could join their fellowship. The reply, repeated around Lynn for weeks, was “Come along now, and bring the deed to your house.” She didn’t.

  Jones left Lynn satisfied that he’d made the impression that he’d wanted, but things turned sour in Indianapolis. He expected his appearances there to be hailed as the return of a conquering hero, and when sizable crowds showed up for afternoon and evening programs, Jones couldn’t resist bragging that he had the power to raise the dead, and, because he wanted all the healings to go off spectacularly, he involved only Temple members who’d been trained to participate. The healings at the afternoon event went well, but an Indianapolis Star reporter attended both of the day’s programs. Though he stopped short of calling Jones a fraud, his article noted that “the people who were called upon [to be healed] in the evening [service] had a striking resemblance to some who were called upon earlier in the day.”

  Jones, accustomed to fawning coverage in the Ukiah Daily Journal, was stung by the obvious implication—the article’s headline read “Church Filled to See ‘Cures’ by Self-Proclaimed ‘Prophet of God’ ”—and further upset when, on the basis of the story, the Indiana State Psychology Board announced it would investigate Jones’s claim that he had the power to heal. This was hardly the kind of publicity that benefited the Temple, so Jones returned to Indianapolis in December and gave a sermon about the Temple’s fine social outreach and other good works. After criticizing other healers who worked their miracles for personal profit, Jones performed another healing of his own, apparently causing a woman in the audience to “pass” a cancer, which was then held up to be viewed by the audience. Then he cautioned everyone not to “give up on the medical profession.”

  His Indianapolis critics weren’t appeased. Jones was challenged to submit the “cancer” to an independent laboratory for tests. He responded that he could not risk enemies somehow rigging the results. Jones retreated to California, and afterward the Temple divested itself of all its remaining businesses and property in Indianapolis. Tim Stoen subsequently convinced the psychology board to drop its investigation. It was a disaster for Jones, but still not equal to the blow to his ego he suffered around the same time, when he tried to claim the legacy—and the followers, and the money and properties—of Father Divine.

  * * *

  In the years since he’d visited Father Divine and the Peace Mission in Pennsylvania, Jones had kept careful track of his mentor’s ministry. In late 1963, while Jones struggled to keep Peoples Temple afloat after returning from Brazil, Father Divine retired from public appearances. A Peace Mission spokesman claimed that age-related infirmities weren’t the reason: “[Father Divine] has said everything there is to say about everything.” Two years later, on September 10, came another announcement: Though he didn’t actually die, Father Divine had chosen to “lay his body down.” He remained “spiritually present” and would eventually resurrect himself in new human form. Meanwhile, his beloved wife, Mother Divine, would lead the Peace Mission. She retained the movement’s headquarters on the luxurious Woodmont estate outside Philadelphia. Peace Mission businesses, including its chains of hotels and restaurants, and its farm community in New York State, continued operating as before.

  In the fall of 1965, Jim Jones was too preoccupied with establishing Peoples Temple in Mendocino County to rush across the country and lay claim to the empire of Father Divine. For the next half dozen years, his focus remained on expanding his
own ministry. Until Peoples Temple had its own successful operations, and until Jones established his own reputation as a divinely inspired, perhaps divine, prophet himself, he realized it was unlikely that Father Divine’s followers, let alone the great man’s widow, would accept him as their original leader somehow returned in Jim Jones’s corporal body. But Jones stayed in regular touch with Mother Divine and Peace Mission members, sending them Temple newsletters that updated Jones’s latest triumphs, first in Mendocino County, then along the West Coast, and finally across much of America. Jones was not a patient man. It was hard to wait. If he could claim the Peace Mission, absorb it into his own control, then his influence would effectively bookend America—Peoples Temple on the West Coast, Peace Mission on the East. Mother Divine would clearly take some persuading; she was still a relatively young woman in her early forties, and undoubtedly enjoyed wielding absolute power from Woodmont. But she was, after all, only a woman, and an attractive one at that. Jones believed his personal charm would overwhelm her.