The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  Another sizable segment of Los Angeles’s black slum population was the elderly, often widows, survivors of the wave who came to the city for defense industry jobs during World War II. They lived, for the most part, on Social Security checks, which barely financed even the most basic subsistence living. These old folks lived in constant fear. Violence was all around them. Their few dollars and personal possessions were constantly at risk—lurking addicts in desperate need of a fix were always eager to prey on the old and weak. Understandably, the old people yearned for protection—the LAPD was notoriously slow to respond to calls from Watts—and the opportunity to live out their last years in some degree of comfort.

  This made the Los Angeles ghettos a perfect recruiting ground for Peoples Temple. Jones had a built-in potential audience that already had good reason to believe the government was out to get them, that white cops were the enemy, and that it was only right that America should distribute its wealth more equally. For the young, Temple programs offered an alternative to the gangs. Old people could join the Temple, go communal if they chose, and enjoy a lifestyle where everything they needed was provided. From Jones’s first occasional expeditions to Los Angeles, he drew large crowds which responded enthusiastically to what he said. Sometimes, seating in rented school auditoriums was insufficient; folding chairs had to be placed in the aisles, and still people were left outside, clamoring to come in and hear Jones preach.

  Though these crowds were predominantly black, there were also whites among them, some of them poor and disenfranchised, too, but others well-to-do and hoping to assuage their racial and financial guilt. Racial equality in the form of fairness in employment and housing and justice was becoming a rallying cry among celebrity Los Angelenos. Jane Fonda came to a Peoples Temple service, along with her husband Tom Hayden, the political activist who’d helped found Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Afterward, she sent Jones a letter enthusiastically praising the Temple. It gave instant cachet to Jones among Los Angeles’s liberal glitterati.

  * * *

  In the summer of 1972, Peoples Temple purchased a church and adjacent apartment building at 1336 South Alvarado Street. The property perfectly suited Temple purposes—the church itself, originally built sixty years earlier for another denomination, featured an elegant, columned entrance and enchanting tower. Inside was seating for about 1,200, with capacity for perhaps 1,400 if extra chairs were added. There was a substantial parking lot behind the church. The Temple paid $129,000 for the property, and Jones bragged that “if race wars and concentration camps don’t come by 1980,” it would eventually be worth $1 million. The lovely Temple building easily outshone the battered church structures that were much more familiar to residents of Watts and South Central. Just by its attractive appearance in a nice setting, Peoples Temple gave the impression of being something more, something special.

  Jones wanted the new Los Angeles temple full for weekend services—his Greyhound fleet virtually assured that. On the weekends that he came to preach in Los Angeles, Jones loaded a half dozen buses with Redwood Valley followers and made the drive south, usually on a Saturday afternoon so he could hold Saturday evening and Sunday morning services before returning to Mendocino County. Jones and some of his entourage spent Saturday night in the South Alvarado Street apartments. Others were farmed out to homes of Los Angeles followers.

  Once the Greyhounds unloaded Redwood Valley riders at the Los Angeles temple, they set out to pick up ghetto passengers. Though South Alvarado Street was reasonably close to the slums—in other cities, only a quick bus ride or short walk—the distance was still daunting. So the Temple provided transportation, sending the buses to designated pickup points. Attending Peoples Temple became not only safe, but convenient for people who otherwise feared for their lives while walking even a block or two.

  Besides Jones’s lengthy sermons, there was music and healings, quite dramatic ones involving multiple participants, and even an occasional raising of the dead. Those resurrected were usually longtime members who’d recently offended Jones in some way. Jack Beam would inform the latest soon-to-be corpse that he or she must topple over when confronted by Jones during the service, and lie still until Jones called for them to rise and live again.

  And the Temple offered more than entertaining meetings. At the back of the main room, nurses provided tests for hypertension and diabetes. Trained social workers helped with welfare and other government-agency-related issues. Legal advice was available; many Los Angeles members either had relatives in trouble with the law or else had problems themselves. Youngsters with drug problems were brought back to Redwood Valley and placed in the Temple addiction program there. “There was practical help, whatever people needed,” says Laura Johnston Kohl.

  After services, there were meals out in the parking lot, and lots of friendly social interaction. “What nobody understands now is, we did a lot of things as a church group, and we very often had fun,” recalls Juanell Smart. “There were times when it was like a carnival, laughing and having a good time. It was not grim in any way. And we knew then, and you have to realize now, that if not for Jim, all of these people would not have come together.”

  At first, Smart was reluctant to attend even a single Temple meeting. A federal government worker, Smart was twice divorced and had four children. Her life in Los Angeles was stressful—there were so many dangers for her kids, and her job sometimes required her to travel as part of emergency teams working with victims of natural disasters like floods. In 1971, Kay Nelson, Smart’s mother, and Jim McElvane, her uncle, began attending whenever Jones’s traveling ministry made a Los Angeles stop. Nelson cared for Smart’s children when their mother was away, and she took them to some of Jones’s services. Smart, though, resisted Nelson’s requests to come along: “Even though my mother and uncle said that this was it, I wasn’t looking for any kind of enlightenment. I was in another relationship that was going bad, and I was thinking about that.”

  One Sunday, Nelson took Teri, Smart’s youngest daughter, to a Temple service. The service dragged, and Smart needed to pick up her daughter and go somewhere else, so she went inside for the first time. The child was seated in the balcony; Smart had to go up to get her. As she did, she couldn’t help listening to Jones preaching down on the stage. “He wasn’t talking about God or salvation or anything like that,” Smart remembers. “He was talking about real life, and how it hurts women when they make bad choices in men, and it felt like he was talking directly to me . . . everything that man said made sense.”

  Smart became what she termed “every-other-weekend faithful,” coming to the new Los Angeles temple on those Saturday nights and Sunday mornings that Jones preached there. She began dating associate Temple pastor David Wise. But shortly after the permanent Los Angeles temple was established on South Alvarado Street, Smart went out drinking and driving following an argument with Wise. She got into an accident and was arrested. When Kay Nelson arrived to bail Smart out, she brought several Temple counselors with her. They harangued Smart about the evils of alcohol, and on the next Sunday that Jones was in town, he chastised her, too. She didn’t like it—“I [was] not a child and [didn’t] deserve to be treated like one.” After she married Wise, her new husband revealed some Temple secrets to her, including how Jones staged healings: “David took me to this little back room upstairs in the church where they had all these pieces of cut-up chicken that Jim would use. During his healing sessions Jim would tell us all to close our eyes, but after that I never did, and I could see him sometimes taking a chicken part and claiming it was a tumor he’d just removed.” After about a year of membership, Smart felt sufficiently disillusioned with Jones to think about quitting Peoples Temple. But all four of her children loved it there, and participated enthusiastically in church youth groups and activities. Smart weighed her personal dissatisfaction against the welfare of her kids and decided, “They’re into it 100 percent, and it’ll disappoint them if I leave. I thought, ‘It’s good for m
y kids to have a church, it’s better for them than what’s out on the [Los Angeles] streets.’ I stayed for my kids and in spite of Jim, and I know I wasn’t the only one who did that.”

  Even on the weekends when Jones wasn’t there and Marceline substituted, people still came for the music, health and legal services, and fellowship in a safe environment. Every weekend, Los Angeles contributed considerable sums to Temple coffers, often $25,000 or more—the Temple was popular there, and lucrative. Yet Los Angeles wasn’t the ideal Temple location. Its church brought in money, and the conditions of city slums and their desperate residents were such that Jones could always count on a solid base of followers. But city politics and the geography of Los Angeles itself thwarted any ambition he might have had to acquire wider influence in the city. African American Tom Bradley, a former LAPD lieutenant, had already been elected to the city council, and shortly after Peoples Temple founded its South Alvarado Street church, Bradley was elected mayor—he was only the second black man ever elected to head a major U.S. city. The slums still stagnated, providing Jones with plenty of sermon fodder, but Bradley hadn’t needed Jim Jones and Peoples Temple to become mayor, and he just as clearly didn’t require their support to stay there. (Bradley’s tenure extended through 1993.) The new mayor occasionally attended Temple programs, and Jones maintained a cordial relationship with him, but not in any prominent advisory capacity. Further, though Peoples Temple did considerable good for the poorest ghetto residents, Watts and South Central were so isolated from the rest of the massive city that their programs could never extend to every area.

  But Jones had never intended Los Angeles to be his ultimate showcase, a major city where elected officials kowtowed to him and no critical public programs were undertaken without Temple involvement and Jones’s approval. Los Angeles had its advantages, from the ripe recruiting grounds of its slums to the wealthy who wanted to ease their social conscience with donations. But Jones had greater ambitions for the Temple, and for himself. It was no longer enough for power brokers to acknowledge the Temple and consult with Jim Jones. He wanted to be a power broker himself. To achieve the stature that he craved, Jones had another city in mind. Los Angeles had money; San Francisco offered influence.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  SAN FRANCISCO

  San Francisco had long been renowned for attracting colorful eccentrics—the Beats of the 1950s, the hippies of 1967’s Summer of Love. Its cultural delights abounded, and the city’s hills, winding streets, and location made it arguably the most attractive metropolis in America.

  But San Francisco’s considerable visual charms and glitzy, liberal reputation were at considerable odds with the makeup and philosophy of its power structure. Historian David Talbot describes 1960s San Francisco as “a city of tribal villages,” but only one tribe, the conservative whites, had real power. They decided that tourism would drive San Francisco’s economy, and the tourists must see exactly what they expected—a compact, charming place offering lots of irresistible ways to spend money. To that end, certain neighborhoods and ethnic groups were accepted. Chinatown lent itself to the image that city leaders wanted, so it must be maintained. Working-class Irish provided construction muscle, and Italians caught the fish that stocked Fisherman’s Wharf markets and the kitchens of upscale restaurants. Gays contributed to San Francisco culture.

  Blacks, however, particularly poor ones—and the vast majority of blacks who in 1972 made up 13 percent of San Francisco’s 715,000 total population were poor—had no critical role in attracting tourists. If anything, they were considered a detriment—cash-laden visitors to San Francisco wanted to see pretty places, not ghettos. San Francisco’s substantial black ghetto, known as the Fillmore for one of its border streets, couldn’t be hidden or disguised. So city leaders conspired to eliminate the Fillmore District eyesore altogether. They spent years trying to accomplish their goal. But Fillmore residents tried to fight back. A group of ministers formed the Western Addition Community Organization (WACO) to rally opposition, but the WACO organizers were mostly white and were soon forced out by blacks. This was appropriate in terms of reflecting the district’s racial population, but ineffective in making an impression on elected city officials, who had little regard for the demands of those with dark skin.

  In general, black ministers whose churches were based in the Fillmore didn’t take leading roles in WACO or other efforts to save what remained of the district. J. Alfred Smith, pastor of a politically active black church in Oakland, wrote, “[It was] a dark age for the black church in San Francisco. Most . . . had become little more than social clubs, where chicken dinners and raffle tickets were the only activities on the agenda. After the Sunday morning service was finished, the [San Francisco] church fathers would seal the buildings up tighter than Pharaoh Ramses’ tomb.”

  The city had very few eloquent, energetic black spokesmen. Foremost among them were state assemblyman Willie Brown and Dr. Carlton Goodlett, a general practitioner who also owned a string of newspapers published in black communities including the Sun-Reporter, the most influential black newspaper in the Bay area.

  By 1972, there was clearly opportunity for some church leader to step forward on behalf of the city’s disenfranchised, not only to rally opposition to oppressive city government but also to instill a new sense of community pride. Jim Jones sensed that the time was right, though to lay groundwork rather than pursue a course of immediate confrontation. He demonstrated considerable restraint, inserting himself and his followers incrementally into the city’s social and political wars.

  It began with the black churches. Beginning in 1970, Jones conducted San Francisco services that were no longer directly affiliated with Macedonia Baptist. His preferred venue was the auditorium at Franklin Junior High on Geary Boulevard and Scott Street in the Fillmore District. The Temple proceedings often didn’t directly conflict with Sunday services at Macedonia and other black churches. Saturday afternoons or nights, or Sunday nights, worked fine. Churchgoers who’d enjoyed Jones’s sermonizing at Macedonia often came to hear him preach again. They were joined by substantial numbers of those Fillmore residents remaining amid ongoing redevelopment—prior to each Franklin Junior High event, Jones had his followers inundate the district with flyers promising “revelations [by Jones] that no man could possibly know,” and “an opportunity to learn the beautiful concepts of apostolic social justice.” If that didn’t persuade people to come, Jones appealed to their bellies. One flyer promised in capital letters, “FREE BANQUET after services!”

  A little before Peoples Temple purchased its Los Angeles property, it also acquired an old multistory building at 1859 Geary Boulevard in San Francisco, a yellow-brick structure in the Fillmore District. The building had a large auditorium with a seating capacity of about 1,800, as well as space for a reception area, and warrens of first floor and upstairs rooms suitable for apartments and offices. The Temple paid $122,500, and renovation cost an additional $50,000 to $60,000. Until the property fix-up was finished, the Temple continued holding meetings at Franklin Junior High. The Geary Boulevard temple wasn’t nearly as imposing as its Los Angeles counterpart, but it was in the right location. Jones set up for business there, alternating his weekend service presence between Los Angeles and San Francisco and spending weekdays in Redwood Valley.

  It had always been Jones’s habit to poach Temple members from other churches—Laurel Street Tabernacle in Indianapolis, the Church of the Golden Rule in Mendocino County. Now he wanted to lure new members from Macedonia Baptist and other black churches where he had established a reputation and, apparently, cooperative relationships. But this time he was somewhat more subtle. Once Jones was in San Francisco to stay, he didn’t make direct appeals for members of these now rival churches to abandon their old congregations and join the Temple. Instead, Jones’s sermons emphasized that Temple members enjoyed more of everything—quality preaching, music, fellowship, and healings, and many visitors from other congregations agreed. Pasto
rs of neighboring black churches found themselves losing members. Several took outraged exception, Macedonia’s Rev. George Bedford especially. The black pastors banded together and called on Carlton Goodlett, apparently hoping that the physician-publisher would label Jones and Peoples Temple as rapacious intruders on the pages of the influential Sun-Reporter. Instead, they were dismayed to discover that Goodlett was already on board the Temple bandwagon.

  Lynetta Jones had become one of Goodlett’s patients, and through her, he became acquainted with her son. Goodlett was pleasantly surprised to learn that he and Jones had a great deal in common, particularly a thirst for racial and economic equality. The doctor had long believed that the city’s black churches had to become more socially active. When the pastors demanded that Goodlett oppose Jones and the Temple, Goodlett’s response was a rewording of Abraham Lincoln’s reply to Union generals jealous of General Ulysses S. Grant’s unexpected rise to prominence: “This man looks to me like he’s pretty successful in interpreting the functional gospel. I don’t know what brand of whiskey he drinks, but if he drinks a special brand of whiskey, you better drink it [yourselves].”