Jim jones who is

As the head of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission, Jones desegregated movie theaters, restaurants, the telephone company, hospitals and the city police department. The Temple ran a free restaurant, and homes for the elderly and mentally ill. Strangers spat on Marcie as she walked with her multiracial family. An article in Esquire magazine listed the places on earth where one might survive a nuclear war. Taking the list to heart, Jones moved his family to Brazil for a while before returning to the United States and settling in Northern California.

Why the change? Why the sunglasses? The bodyguards? Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America. Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today. I n the summer of , hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies.

By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead. It was the largest fire in American history. He continued his flamboyant methods, lying down on the ice between fur hunters and baby harp seals on a fact-finding mission to Newfoundland. Jim quoted that quite a lot.

And we believed him. What was your impression of Jones when you first arrived at the Temple? The first time I met him, I was convinced he could read minds, cast spells, do all kinds of powerful things, both good and evil. I was afraid of him and stayed afraid of him for seven years. I learned after the massacre that he drugged people on the outpost there to keep them from trying to leave, to keep them from trying to dissent, to control them in different ways, all unbeknownst to the masses.

Do you think he really believed he was doing something good for the world? He was a very complex, confusing character. In some ways he was a good guy. He was passionate about interracial integration. His goal was to set up this utopian community where everything would be fair and equal. At the same time, he was very paranoid. He could not accept the fact that one person would leave him, ever. He had something he could blackmail all of us with.

So he came back. The thing was, too, that Jim would not let children off the compound. So if you were going to leave, you were leaving your child. There was no way of getting a child out of Jonestown. In the long run, Jim gave in to drugs and he got himself boxed into a corner. And his paranoia got completely out of control. What were the warning signs that things might get really dangerous? One big warning sign was that he had revolutionary suicide practices.

He called them White Nights. He did this several times, both in the United States and in Guyana. That sounds like a pretty big warning sign. How did those work? White Night! Get to the pavilion! Your lives are in danger! Then he would tell us that in the United States, African Americans were being herded into concentration camps, that there was genocide on the streets.

He said they were on their way. So there you were, in the middle of the jungle. Shots were being fired, and people were surrounding you with guns. Then a couple of women brought out these trays of cups of what they said was cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, or Flavor-Aid—whichever they had. Everybody drank it. And then Jim would just start laughing and clapping his hands. Sleep tight! Do you think the people who died on November 18 thought at first that it was another dress rehearsal?

No, when the final time came, I think people were aware it was the real thing. He constructed Jonestown in Guyana in and spurred a following to live with him there as he touted a socialist paradise free from U.

Amid rumors of human rights abuses, the American government sent a delegation led by U. Representative Leo Ryan in November Following the shooting, Jones orchestrated a mass murder-suicide of his followers, which took the lives of commune members, of them children, in an act that entailed drinking Flavor Aid laced with cyanide. Appian Way has put forth strong efforts in the documentary world, especially as it pertains to progressive environmental change. Subscribe to Deadline Breaking News Alerts and keep your inbox happy.