Search

The Online Encyclopedia and Dictionary

 
     
 

Encyclopedia

Dictionary

Quotes

   
 

Jim Jones

James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931November 18, 1978) was the founder of the People's Temple, an originally Christian group that later mainly advocated social justice and turned into a cult when Jim Jones turned it into a mini-dictatorship, with controversial viewpoints and practices.

Jones then founded Jonestown in Guyana; the town was a closed-in society of Jones' followers (13 followers left Jonestown with a reporter due to the fact that they 'wanted out') where all of Jonestown committed suicide or murder on Jones's instructions by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid (a cheaper version of Kool-Aid, with which it is often confused in this particular situation) in 1978 and shooting each other to death. A few members were found shot, including Jones himself (who shot himself in the head while sitting on a deck chair), while some people might have been injected with cyanide.

The label "cult" is disputed in relation to Jones' group by the book Hearing the Voices of Jonestown . [1]

Jones was arrested in Los Angeles on 13th December 1973, and charged with soliciting an undercover police officer for sex in an area of McArthur park known for homosexual activity at the time. He was on record as telling his followers that he was "the only true heterosexual", but at least one account exists of him sodomizing a member of his congregation, ostensibly to prove that man's own gay tendencies.

See also

External links

References

Last updated: 05-15-2005 21:40:42