We would like to highlight a few other improvements beyond the new design of the site.
First is the addition of an extensive series of Jonestown remembrances listed under “25th Anniversary, 18 November 2003”. A navigation bar will take visitors directly to these first-person accounts and observations written expressly for the 25th Anniversary. We will be adding stories to this section as they come in.
A new section called “About Jonestown” also has its own navigation bar, and several subdirectories which take people to Frequently Asked Questions, information about who lived and died in Jonestown, past and present issues of the jonestown report, tape summaries and transcripts, and articles and primary source documents by and about Peoples Temple and its members.
The Primary Sources section under “About Jonestown” has
been enlarged to include such documents as the Gang of Eight letter
(http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/PrimarySources/print_gang8ed.htm),
Jim Jones’ critique of the Bible in his pamphlet, “The Letter
Killeth” (http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/PrimarySources/letter-rev.htm),
and notes written to the world from Jonestown on 18 November (http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/PrimarySources/tropp.htm
and http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/PrimarySources/annie.htm),
with more documents to be uploaded soon.
Within a few months, we will reconfigure the Articles section, also under “About Jonestown,” to focus on analyses of Peoples Temple by students and scholars of new religious movements, historians, and other writers. Remembrances by former Temple members, relatives, and those who were involved with the Temple during its life will form the basis of a new “Observations” section, one we hope will grow with each year.
The photo gallery (http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Gallery/gallery_2.htm) has been expanded, and allows viewers to scroll through thumbnail pictures, and with a click, enlarge them for better viewing – all on the same screen.
Visitors can continue to search the site for names and concepts, using the “Search” function, also now clearly marked by its own navigation bar (http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/search.html).
As always, we welcome comments and suggestions.
In the meantime, the managers of the site would like to express our
appreciation to Elizabeth Parker for her creative skill and her sensitivity
to the site’s content. Thank you, Liz!
As a result, researchers can now search under the subject "Peoples Temple" to find all of the Peoples Temple-related primary source materials in Melvyl (http://melvyl.cdlib.org), the online catalog of the University of California libraries, the California State Library, and a number of independent California libraries, including the library of the California Historical Society. The Melvyl catalog includes a description of the Moore Family Papers, as well as books and government documents related to the Peoples Temple located at CHS and other libraries throughout the state. Non-print holdings include audio and video recordings of Temple meetings, interviews with Jim Jones and Jonestown news footage. Guides or finding aids to larger collections – such as the Moore Family Papers – provide more detailed information than is possible in catalog records; these may be searched in the Online Archive of California (http://www.oac.cdlib.org).
Current efforts at CHS focus on processing the 15 cartons of documents that constitute the FBI Papers from Jonestown. The FBI numbered the documents that were gathered by U.S. and Guyanese officials and produced a general outline of the papers in 1979. CHS plans to produce and provide online access to a finding aid to this collection, as well as revise the original 1985 guide to the Peoples Temple Records. The collection consists of 130 cartons of the Temple’s organizational and personal records, along with the papers generated by the settling of the Peoples Temple estate and dissolution of the organization.
CHS continues to support scholarly and family-related research in the Peoples Temple Collection. Researchers display a wide range of interests in the collection, from the roles of politicians in the Temple's history, to investigations into the organization's social work and advocacy. Researchers are working on books, scholarly articles, documentary films, and theatrical productions.
The North Baker Research Library is open to the public Wednesday through Friday from 12:00 pm to 4:30 pm. Appointments are not required, but due to the limited amount of seating in the Reading Room, researchers are encouraged to email or call ahead if they would like to discuss their research prior to visiting or to reserve a seat. Contact the Library by email at reference@calhist.org or call 415-357-1848 ext. 20.
Please note that the Library will be closed from August 11-September 2, 2003.
But I had also arrived with the anticipation of the California that gave birth to the revolutionary movements from the 1960s, from images of Haight Ashbury to the birth of the Black Panthers in Oakland and the civil rights struggles of the Free Speech Movement. This interest led me to explore the contents of one of the largest collections housed at the Society, the Peoples Temple Collections, in which I found some of the richest materials documenting the issues of social justice in the 1950s through the 1970s.
As an archivist in charge of making collections available to the public, my initial reaction to the Peoples Temple materials was the realization that, for many, the documentary history of the period contained in the papers was secondary to the more primary purpose they served of telling, and retelling, the story of the members and Jim Jones.
The earliest projects I assisted the public with were devoted to the creation of films and articles, revisiting the tragedy of November 1978, an event I only barely remembered as a child, captured in my mind as the cover of Time magazine which my father subscribed to. Through one of these early projects, though, I was introduced to an entire network of those devoted to the promotion of the public’s need to remember, or discover, the Temple’s living history of families and community building. Through Rebecca Moore and Fielding McGehee, I was given the name of Denice Stephenson, as a possible research assistant. Little did I know then that she and I were embarking on a working relationship that would grow into a partnership, with the idea of expanding both the usability of the collections and exploring new ways of publicizing what she and I already knew – how rich the collections were for everyone, ranging from survivors, family members of those who died, to researchers both inside and outside academia.
Our initial idea – to arrange and describe the collections, and deliver guides to the collections via the web – have only now begun to bear fruit. But the more intangible assets of our association have been my inclusion in what can only be termed “living history;” the meaningful partnerships forged with the goal of telling all of the many stories intrinsic to presenting, not just the accurate story of what happened on November 18, 1978, but the individuals that came together to create that story, their hopes, dreams, differences, and efforts. Together, we attempted to make sense of the paper trail that brought the records to CHS, the players that were involved in their production and the many who had a stake in its preservation and interpretation. From that, we moved forward in our quest to make them both understandable and legible, and created a environment that welcomed everyone to “see for themselves” what the collections had to say.
Often I found myself helping someone in our Reading Room, and a researcher would ask what do you think about the Peoples Temple? My only answer could be (as my role as an impartial archivist), you must decide for yourself – but only after you have taken in all of their history, from their newspaper, The Peoples Forum, from the first person accounts, secondary sources, and, most importantly, their documentary history. Only then does it become apparent that the story is far more complex than the story we’ve been told – and what many continue to believe. While I was not always successful in moving the public to view the entirety of the church’s history, I was able to steer patrons to realize the scope of the collections, which denied a facile understanding of the church as a cult, but rather pointed them toward an understanding of their involvement in the communities they existed in and created – good or bad – within the larger society.
In June of this year, I left CHS to pursue my career as an archivist
at UC Berkeley. My most difficult task to leave behind was the work
that Denice and I, with the support of many, including Rebecca Moore,
Fielding McGehee, and Stephan Jones, had begun. Denice, with Director
of the Library Mary Morganti, continues to work on arrangement and description
of the collections, and I feel that they are in far more capable hands
than my own. But I must surely thank all of those whose commitment to
truth and understanding taught me invaluable lessons of how an archive
can become living history, which is still in the process of being written.
By donating these materials to a public university, researchers and the public will be able not only to read the words of Jim Jones and his followers (available at http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Tapes/tapes.htm), but will be able to listen to those words themselves in the library Special Collections department. The collection will also be easily accessible and searchable for anyone in person who is not comfortable with computers. Extended physical distribution of these materials will also insure the future existence of these materials beyond a vulnerability to electronic media storage.
To facilitate access to its archival collections to users in modern times, all public archive facilities naturally computerize information to help researchers and the public make the most of their collections. The Special Collections department of the San Diego State University Library is currently using the information already contained on the Jonestown Institute’s website, especially the audiotape summaries and transcripts, to create a standardized format Collection Finding Aid. This aid will be internet accessible and help anyone interested in reviewing these materials in person to do so. The information will also be transferred to both California and national, library archive database systems to better inform all libraries that this collection is available for use.
While more than 700 tapes have been donated to the library archive, approximately 100 of the audiotapes have been summarized and transcribed by the Jonestown Institute as of July 2003. As the transcript and summary process is ongoing, the Jonestown Institute will continue to donate those documents as they are completed, and the Special Collections department’s finding aids will expand accordingly.
The San Diego State University Library is honored to receive this collection and recognizes its importance. As the transcription of these tapes is in itself a historic and significant contribution to the field of Alternative Religious Movement study and general understanding of these events and similar groups, the donation of these materials to a public university’s library is a major contribution to researchers and humanity in general.
The website address for the Special Colections and University Archives as San Diego State University Library is http://infodome.sdsu.edu/about/depts/spcollections/. For questions regarding the Peoples Temple archive, please send an email to: speccol@library.sdsu.edu. Emails should be addressed to Jennifer Martinez or Christina Favretto.
Anyone who attempts to tell the Jonestown story – or any part of it, for that matter – appreciates how difficult it is to present it openly, honestly, and completely. The same holds true even for someone who tries to limit the story to that told through audiotapes, and to create a CD that captures the nuances of Peoples Temple and the man who led it.
I was initially drawn to the Jonestown audi tape project because I
found it fascinating to be able to listen to untainted recordings of
Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. I started picking tapes to listen
to based upon the FBI descriptions that were on the Jonestown Institute
website. Some of the tapes had transcripts available, while others did
not. The length of the Temple’s recording sessions and the quality
of the recordings, as I discovered, varied from tape to tape.
Initially I just listened to the tapes without transcripts. As I started
to hear things that I found interesting, I decided I would record parts
of them and possibly burn a CD for myself.
I picked parts that I found interesting, shocking, and in a few cases
humorous. I did this by going through transcripts and highlighting potential
areas of interest. I would then go through the tape with the transcript
and try and locate the section in question. When there was no transcript
available, I listened to the entire cassette and sampled as I listened.
Over a period of twelve months I went through a total of twenty-three
cassettes that varied in length from three minutes to two hours. The
tapes spanned the Redwood Valley years through Jonestown.
In some cases there was only a few areas of potential interest on a 120-minute cassette. It could take fifteen to twenty minutes to locate a section on a tape that had twenty-six pages of transcript.
When I started requesting cassettes, it was merely part of my own personal
odyssey to learn more about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. As I listen
to the CD now, I feel it offers a well-rounded glimpse into the lucid,
odd, and disturbing moments of what it was like to be a member of the
Temple and to live in Jonestown.
I recently came across a quote from a political forum thread on a webpage
for a music group. To me it seems to sum up the power and charisma of
Jim Jones’ control over the members of the Peoples Temple.
"Through clever and constant application of propaganda people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise." Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1923.
There are a number of references to the evils of fascism, the Nazis,
and Hitler in the tapes I listened to. It seems ironic to me that someone
who claimed to have waved the flag of socialism ultimately used a tool
of early fascism to achieve his goals.
If I walk away from this experience with anything, I feel I have a better
understanding of how people were willing to follow Jim Jones as far
as they did. I also realize that not everyone wanted to follow him to
the end.
This CD may be purchased for $10. This price includes postage to anywhere
in North America. The CD includes some rare images within the color
artwork. Sections of this CD do contain strong language and mature subject
matter that may not be for everyone. For more information please email
psnm@email.com.
The balance of the tapes – consisting of approximately 30 that the FBI neglected to duplicate on its first pass through our initial Freedom of Information Act request – should be released by the end of 2003.
The FBI recovered 971 tapes from Jonestown and Georgetown following the deaths of 18 November 1978. Of that total, according to the FBI, 245 were either blank (22) or contained only music (223). Over the years, we have made requests to obtain copies of the remaining 726 tapes, including the 53 which were initially withheld from public disclosure.
More recently, we requested copies of 11 tapes from the “Music” category which the FBI describes as including “live entertainment” in Jonestown or “performances by the Jonestown Express.” Release of these tapes is also expected by the end of the year.
All Jonestown audiotapes which are denoted on the website at http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Tapes/Tapes/FBISummaries/fbi.html with an asterisk (*) symbol are available for duplication. In addition, we have transcribed and summarized more than 100 tapes which are listed at http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Tapes/Tapes/TapeTranscripts/transcripts.html.
For copies of tapes, contact us through fieldingmcgehee@yahoo.com,
or write to Fielding McGehee, 3553 Eugene Place, San Diego, CA 92116.
Tapes are $2 each, postage included. Contact us about rates for bulk
orders.
The findings of the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) contained in the State Department document appear to discredit rumors which have emerged over the years of multiple gunshot or knife-wound victims. AFIP did not offer any speculation on whether some people were forced to ingest the poison themselves or were injected with syringes, as others have maintained.
The seven identified bodies included: Patty Lou Parks, the only Peoples Temple member who was shot to death at the Port Kaituma airstrip during the attack on Rep. Leo Ryan’s party; Sharon Amos and two of her children, all of whom died due to knife wounds in Georgetown; Jim Jones and Ann Elizabeth Moore, the only two previously identified as those found in Jonestown with gunshot wounds; and an “unknown infant male” who suffered what was described as a “crush type skull fracture.”
There was no additional information on any of the seven, and no identification or additional details of the infant’s death were ever released. In addition, the AFIP report apparently neglected to include one other name, that of Liane Harris, who died of knife wounds along with her mother Sharon Amos and two siblings in Georgetown.
AFIP conducted the examinations at the request of the government of Guyana. While Guyana waived requirements for autopsies – and even formal identification – of all the dead before releasing the bodies to the United States, it did insist upon a determination of trauma.
The AFIP findings were included in a State Department document which also listed the seven bodies that the U.S. government selected for autopsies. The document was among nine records released to the editors of the jonestown report in response to a FOIA request for the agency’s preliminary listings of the Jonestown dead.
Substantive records apparently no longer exist. Indeed, as one FOIA caseworker pointed out, the informality and urgency with which the volunteers moved in and out of Guyana may have resulted in a relatively insignificant paper trail, and the evidence of that apparently disappeared years ago.
The Internal Revenue Service has been unable to locate any tax records – including applications for tax exemption – for Peoples Temple or any of its corporate entities.
The editors of the jonestown report asked the agency for all records in its possession related to Peoples Temple Christian Church; Truth Enterprises; the Apostolic Corporation; and TRI Smith Builders, the last three of which were corporate manifestations of the Temple. At the request of the IRS, we later provided the Federal Employee Identification Numbers (EIN) for each entity. Nevertheless, in a letter of 26 October 2002, the agency said, “We have no record of [the] organizations… therefore, we have no documents responsive to your request.”
A similar request to the California State Franchise Tax Board yielded similar results. In a request filed under the state’s Public Record Law, the editors of the jonestown report provided EIN for Peoples Temple and two of its corporate entities.
The agency was able to locate – and release – one application for tax-exemption from the Apostolic Corporation. However, in a letter of 12 November 2002, the tax board said it was not able to provide any documents on Peoples Temple “since the file has been purged of any public information.” A second letter of the same date said that the agency located two corporations using the name Truth Enterprises, but that “due to the extended inactivity [of the corporations], these files have been purged and are no longer available.”
The suit resulted from the agency’s inability or unwillingness to review its Jonestown documents and to determine if the exemptions to disclosure claimed in the early 1990s are still valid.
In 1998 and 1999, the editors of the jonestown report made several requests under the Freedom of Information Act for limited numbers of documents in FBI files on Peoples Temple and Jonestown. The FBI responded that there were more than 48,000 documents – i.e., the entire Jonestown file – related to the initial requests. The agency eventually released three CDs containing its entire Jonestown file.
However, the CDs had neither an index, nor a guide on how to find individual documents. Moreover, since the documents were scanned onto the CDs through an imaging program instead of a word program, there was no access to people or subjects through word searches. The documents also retained the deletions made when the agency initially catalogued the records about ten years ago.
After the agency rejected our administrative appeals and re-affirmed its claims of exemption, we filed suit against the FBI, claiming that the agency failed to meet its responsibility under the FOIA. The suit is currently pending before U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. (McGehee et al. v. Department of Justice, Civil Action #01-1872).
The U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs – now known as the Committee on International Relations – investigated the assassination of Rep. Leo Ryan and the deaths of Peoples Temple members that followed. The committee’s May 1979 report contains a short description of the events and a superficial analysis of the performance of U.S. government agencies, both before and after the deaths. The bulk of the 782-page committee report includes congressional correspondence authorizing the investigation, lists of the Jonestown dead, lists of Social Security checks recovered at Jonestown, reprints of the Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act, and newspaper and magazine coverage of the deaths in Guyana.
Throughout the volume, however, are notations of material in the “classified version” of the committee report. Items in the classified report include: “Tactics” and “Motivation” of Jim Jones and Peoples Temple; “Conspiracy” against Jones and the Temple; “Opponents and media intimidated; public officials used”; and “Awareness of danger, predicting the degree of violence.” According to a committee staff member, the classified material fills upwards of 20 to 25 boxes of documents in the committee’s possession, with much of that material coming from federal administrative agencies which cooperated with the committee in its probe.
Scholars of new religious movements initially petitioned for release of the materials in 1998, twenty years after the Jonestown deaths. However, according to another committee staff member, the general rule which governs most confidential investigations blocks release of any material for 30 years after the event. Whether the date for potential release is November 2008 – the thirtieth anniversary of the Jonestown deaths – or May 2009 – the thirtieth anniversary of the completion of the congressional report – is unknown at this time.
According to Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA), the congresswoman for the editors of the jonestown report, the 30-year rule guarantees neither instant nor complete access to the documents when the time has elapsed. The purpose of the 30-year rule is for “reasons of privacy,” said Ms. Davis in a letter of 15 October 2002, and that consideration “may well apply to at least some of the documents.”
The chair of the International Relations Committee will be “the only
person authorized to release official documents to the public,” Ms.
Davis added. “Further, the Freedom of Information Act does not apply
in this case, since the records of Congress are exempt from requests made
pursuant to this Act.”
The collection, entitled Peoples Temple and Black Religion in America, may be ordered through the university’s website (www.indiana.edu/~iupress/) and such online bookstores as amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
The book is edited by Anthony B. Pinn of Macalester College, Mary R. Sawyer of Iowa State University, and Rebecca Moore of San Diego State University. Original articles for the collection include essays by Dr. Duchess Harris and Adam Waterman of Macalester College, Milmon Harrison of University of California at Davis, Tanya Hollis of the California Historical Society, and Rev. J. Alfred Smith of Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland. The book also includes three important essays by black scholars writing in 1979 and 1980.
Richard Janaro, who – together with his wife Claire – was on a Temple boat off the coast of Guyana at the time of the deaths in Jonestown, died earlier this year after a long illness. He was 83. He is survived by his wife. The Janaros’ two children – Mauri Kay, 15, and Darren Richard, 14 – died in Jonestown.
Fred Lewis, a San Francisco butcher who lost 27 relatives in Jonestown, died on May 14 after a long illness. His relatives in Jonestown included his wife, Doris, and seven children. His niece, Rev. Jynona Norwood, leads the annual memorial service at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland.
Tim Carter lived in Jonestown and escaped on the final day: tcarter999@comcast.net.Sherwin Harris, father of Liane Harris, who died on 18 November 1978, describes himself as "co-founder of the Concerned Relatives Group [who] had a unique perspective as a non(ever)member parent dealing with the Temple and as an eyewitness to the events as they transpired in Guyana and the people and other groups involved." He has subsequently consulted with other parents whose children "were similarly involved with cults." His phone number is (800) 733-7037; email sherwinh@aol.com.Laurie Efrein Kahalas, a long-time Temple member and author of Snake Dance, maintains the website www.jonestown.com: dan_laurie@comcast.netLaura (Johnston) Kohl lived in Jonestown but was in Georgetown on 18 November: lkohl1920@hotmail.com. See also her article in this issue of the jonestown report at http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/25Anniversary/reflec_observ/kohl.htm.Bryan and Kristine (Johnston Tarver) Kravitz, long-time Temple members, were living in San Francisco in 1978: kbbsherdt@yahoo.com; phone 650-357-8944. See also Bryan’s article in this issue of the jonestown report at http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/25Anniversary/reflec_observ/kravitz.htm.Jim Jones, Jr., adopted African American son of the Rev. Jim Jones, grew up in Peoples Temple and lived in Jonestown, but was in Georgetown on 18 November: jim.jones@guidant.comDeborah Layton, former member who left Jonestown and encouraged Rep. Leo Ryan to investigate the community, is the author of Seductive Poison: www.seductivepoison.com; www.peoplestemple.com; www.deborahlayton.com; or www.laytonpr.com. Email at djlayton1@yahoo.com.Vera (Ingram) Washington was a member of Peoples Temple for several years but left in 1973 because of conflicts she had with the leadership of the group: verabw@yahoo.com. See also her article in this issue of the jonestown report at http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/25Anniversary/reflec_observ/washington.htm.
The following scholars have agreed to talk with researchers, scholars, and members of the media concerning their research into Peoples Temple and Jonestown.
John R. Hall, Department of Sociology, University of California - Davis, Davis, CA 95616; email jrhall@ucdavis.edu. See also his article in this issue the jonestown report at http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/articles/hall.pdf.Massimo Introvigne, CESNUR - Center for Studies on New Religions, Via Juvarra 20, Torino, Italy 10122; telephone 39-011-541905; email cesnur@tin.it.Rebecca Moore, Department of Religious Studies, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-8143; telephone 619/594-6252; email remoore@mail.sdsu.edu.Catherine Wessinger, Department of Religious Studies, Loyola University, 6363 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70118; telephone 504/865-3182; email wessing@loyno.edu. See also her article in this issue of the jonestown report at http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/25Anniversary/25articles/25wessinger.htm.