Jim Jones: The People's Temple

Jim Jones was a founder who founded The People’s Temple. The People’s Temple is best known for the November 18, 1978 death of over 900 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana, along with nine others at a nearby airstrip and in Georgetown. Jim Jones was born in a rural community in Indiana close to the border of Ohio. His parents were James Thurman Jones who was a World War I veteran and Lynetta Putnam. In 1934, during the Great Depression Jones’ parents, due to economic struggle, were forced to move the family to nearby Lynn, Indiana. Later on Jim Jones and others claim that his father was a part of the Ku Klux Klan. Growing up, kids would say Jim Jones was a weird kid, obsessed with religion…and obsessed with death. They have also claimed that
In 1951, Jones moved to Indianapolis and went to Butler University where he received his degree in secondary education. Jim Jones became a member of the Communist Party USA in 1951 where he began attending meetings and rallies in Indianapolis. Jones then got flustered with harassment received particularly regarding meetings between him and his mother with a guy named Paul Robeson during the McCarthy hearings. Jones got surprised when a Methodist superintendent helped him to start in the church even though he knew that Jones was a communist, especially when he didn’t meet him through the American Communist Party. In 1952, Jones became a student pastor at the Sommerset Southside Methodist Church, but left because the pastors didn’t like that he integrated the African Americans into his congregation. Around that same time he witnessed a faith-healing service at the Seventh Day Baptist Church. He learned that it attracted people and their money and he concluded that with that financial help from such healings he could reach his social goals. Jones then started his own church called the Peoples Temple Christian Church Full