My aunt, Mrs. Bertha Horton, was a member of Peoples Temple in the early 70s. From my mother's account, my aunt left Peoples Temple sometime between 1974 and 1978. She quit after Jones reneged on a promise to visit Texas and raise my great-grandfather from the dead in 1974.

According to my mother, Aunt Bertha had some kind of office at the Peoples Temple headquarters in San Francisco and even had her own desk. I was surprised to find that out, given the fact that most of the people who held positions in Jones' church were white.

Mrs. Horton never went to Guyana. She lived until 1992.

My great-grandfather was never a member of Peoples Temple. He lived in Texas all of his life. Most of my relatives live in East Texas, but African American migration patterns often take black families from Texas to either Chicago or California. Aunt Bertha and her husband moved to California in the 1950s. My parents moved to the Chicago area in 1971, where they raised my brother and me.

I was born in 1974, so I don't remember much about my great-grandfather's death or Mr. Jones' theatrics. I met my aunt two or three times, and she seemed like a normal person. I never knew that she had been a member of Peoples Temple until my mother recently told me about the events surrounding my great-grandfather's death.