[Editor’s note: Connor Rustin was one of the students in Prof. Alexandra Prince’s class on Peoples Temple and Jonestown at Skidmore College in the Spring of 2025 who assisted in the transcription of letters from Jonestown residents. This is the paper she wrote about her experiences in working with the text.]
Over the past few weeks, our class has been working to transcribe and analyze hundreds of letters written by members of Peoples Temple in Jonestown, in addition to completing various readings regarding life in Guyana. These sources and readings, whether they be external scholarly analyses of the history of and dichotomies within the Temple, or testimonies written by former members after the events of November 18, 1978, all showcase a multiplicity of perspectives and standpoints. Some argue that Jonestown was a utopia founded on principles of enacting genuine societal change and providing social services, while others contend that the Temple was not all it was cracked up to be and that serious abuses were committed against members.
Though one might expect the contents of the letters written by Temple members themselves during the period in which they lived in Jonestown to either affirm or debunk these common narratives, the only thing able to be taken away definitively from examining these testimonies is that everything ever said or written about Peoples Temple, Jonestown, and Jim Jones is conflicting. As survivor Tim Carter phrased it in an interview, “there are a lot of people who feel that Jonestown really was just a concentration camp and nothing more, and others who feel that it was a real opportunity. Both realities are true, and that’s one of the mind-fucks of Peoples Temple, is that everything about it is contradictory.”[1] In looking at the letters written by Temple members, one realizes that putting a black-and-white label or definition on Peoples Temple is a moot task; no two people experienced life in Jonestown the same way, and critically analyzing the writings of Temple members produces more questions than it does answers.
The majority of the letters focused on the daily lives of the members, and several of them took the form of correspondences addressed to relatives. In one letter, a Temple member named Teska Lee Williams describes the beauty of Jonestown to a friend or family member, and tells them how happy she is about living in Guyana. Furthermore, she provides this relative a number to contact her with, and tells them to bring her a number of clothing items and personal effects when they visit.[2] These simple details expressed in a mere few sentences completely contradict the commonly held belief that Temple members were kept isolated from society once in Jonestown. Though it is an objective truth that Jim Jones was reluctant in his allowances of correspondences between members and external society as “the leadership cadre, along with the rank and file members, were well aware that some of their activities in Jonestown constituted kidnapping, sexual abuse, torture, and other criminal acts”[3] (in one audio tape recovered from Jonestown by the FBI, Jim Jones can even be heard explicitly stating that “as for outgoing mail, it must be written in front of the letter-writing committee”[4]), the idea that members were not allowed any communications with the rest of the world, including visits from outsiders, is an objective falsehood.
Despite the commendations of Jonestown expressed in letters like Teska Lee Williams, not all of the letters displayed such positive outlooks. In one letter addressed to Jim Jones from a Temple member named Barbara Walker, the young woman expressed her disdain for Jonestown and the fact that she had been unable to see or receive any information about her children or parents for years, stating “I don’t know whether they’re dead or alive.”[5] According to Edith Roller’s journal, Barbara was forcibly sedated and confined to Jonestown’s Special Care Unit following an incident in which she violently attacked Stephen Jones.[6] In a different letter, a Temple member named Gloria Dawn Walker pleaded with Jim Jones to be permitted to leave Jonestown, expressing that she felt coerced into coming.[7] The negative experiences recounted by these members, especially Barbara testifying to her unwilling lack of contact with her family and forced isolation, stand in stark opposition to the happy and pleasant stories expressed by members like Teska Lee Williams.
Though the belief that Temple members were brainwashed is a common one, examining letters written by Temple members in Jonestown complicates this idea. Ronnie Dennis, who would become one of the shooters at the Port Kaituma Airstrip despite only being sixteen years of age, would testify to his strong political beliefs and socialist ideals in a letter to Jim Jones.[8] In one letter written by an unidentified author, the writer attests to the fact that he is willing to stick with Jones no matter what, and states plainly that he “would kill [his] wife or child if necessary.”[9] In another letter, Clifford Gieg states that not only is he willing to lay his own life down in addition to killing his wife and child, but that he would also not hesitate to kill anyone who attempted to defect.[10] Despite this explicit statement, Clifford Gieg survived the mass deaths at Jonestown, and would later publicly state that his brother who died at Jonestown was murdered and that Jim Jones was “a monster.”[11] In her book about Peoples Temple, Rebecca Moore states that, “members confessed their wrongdoing publicly, within the congregation, or wrote down private responses to the questions posed, even if they had to make up their own sins.”[12] This is an idea that Fielding McGehee and Stephen Jones reiterate in their interviews and email correspondences with our class, claiming that many of the morally questionable sentiments expressed in the letters crafted in Jonestown were written under coercion.
The statements made in letters written at Jonestown by another survivor, Leslie Wagner Wilson, also contradict her later testimonies about her experiences while a member of Peoples Temple. In the portion of her 2009 memoir that our class read, Slavery of Faith, Wilson stated that “[Larry Schacht] and I got along well from the start […] The days I spent in the medical office were the best […] my passion for [medicine] would keep me up nights, studying.”[13] However, in direct conflict to this, she iterated in a letter written at Jonestown that she felt looked down upon by the other nurses aides, and expressed that she was given less opportunities and had to prove herself more because she was black.[14]
Given the multiplicity and variety of accounts from Jonestown, how do we wrestle with reconciling all of these contradictions? First, we must understand that the hundreds of people living within Jonestown each had different backgrounds and perspectives that they brought with them – no two people are going to share the same story. It’s evident from the letters that Jim Jones, Jonestown, and Peoples Temple all meant radically different things to radically different people. In researching specific aspects of Peoples Temple, it may be easy to come to one black-and-white conclusion; however, in order to get a full picture, one must view all of the testimonies holistically and recognize that assigning labels to the Temple or their members is impossible.
There will never be a definitive understanding of the members of Peoples Temple: not their lives; not their ideology; not their deaths. Regardless, it’s incredibly important that the membership is kept at the heart of conversations about the group and the events that occurred at Jonestown, and that’s what completing these transcriptions does. It’s much different to read texts discussing a movement than it is to see the lived experiences of the members through their own writings. The process of transcribing the letters humanizes the members of Peoples Temple, and forces recognition of the fact that their legacies have not ended. In looking at the page on Alternative Considerations which lists information about each member that died on November 18, 1978, it’s near impossible to find a single person without a remembrance.
Bibliography
“Dad,” FBI code: EE-1-K-35.
Diaries of Note. “Heavy Rains Have Fallen.” Edith Roller, 24 August, 1978. Last modified August 24, 2023. https://diariesofnote.com/2023/08/24/heavy-rains-have-fallen/.
Gieg, Clifford. “To Dad!” FBI code: EE-1-G-74.
Jones, Jim (speaker). “Q271 Transcript.” The Jonestown Institute. Recorded September 19, 1978. Accessed March 29, 2025. https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=27404.
Moore, Rebecca. Peoples Temple and Jonestown in the Twenty-First Century. In New Religious Movements. Cambridge University Press, 2022. Accessed April 11, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009032025.
Meyer, Bill. “Jonestown Survivor Remembers Brother’s Murder.” Cleveland Dot Com, November 18, 2008. https://www.cleveland.com/world/2008/11/jonestown_survivor_remembers_b.html.
Urban, Hugh B. New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements: Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America. University of California Press, 2015. Accessed March 29, 2025. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctv1wxrsk.16.
Walker, Barbara. “To Dad.” FBI code: EE-uvwxyz-16.
Walker, Gloria D. “To Dad.” FBI: code: EE-uvwyxz-19.
Williams, Teska L. “Letter to Eugenia.” FBI code: EE-1-uvwxyz-11.
Wilson, Leslie W. “Dear Dad.” FBI code: EE-1-uvwxyz-20.
Wilson, Leslie W. Slavery of Faith. iUniverse Publishing, 2009.
Notes
[1] Hugh B. Urban, New Age, Neopagan, and New Religious Movements: Alternative Spirituality in Contemporary America, University of California Press, 2015, JSTOR, 248.
[2] Teska Lee Williams, “Letter to Eugenia,” FBI code: EE-1-uvwxyz-11.
[3] Rebecca Moore, Peoples Temple and Jonestown in the Twenty-First Century, in New Religious Movements, Cambridge University Press, 2022, 55.
[4] Jim Jones (speaker), “Q271 Transcript,” The Jonestown Institute, recorded September 19, 1978, accessed April 11, 2025. https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=27404.
[5] Barbara Walker, “To Dad,” FBI code: EE-uvwxyz-16.
[6] Diaries of Note. “Heavy Rains Have Fallen.” Edith Roller, 24 August, 1978. Last modified August 24, 2023. https://diariesofnote.com/2023/08/24/heavy-rains-have-fallen/.
[7] Gloria Dawn Walker, “To Dad,” FBI code: EE-uvwyxz-19.
[8] Ronnie Dennis, FBI code: EE-1-K-36.
[9] “Dad,” FBI code: EE-1-K-35.
[10] Clifford Gieg, “To Dad!” FBI code: EE-1-G-74.
[11] Bill Meyer, “Jonestown Survivor Remembers Brother’s Murder,” Cleveland Dot Com, November 18, 2008.
[12] Moore, Peoples Temple and Jonestown, 35.
[13] Leslie Wagner Wilson, Slavery of Faith, iUniverse Publishing, 2009, 77.
[14] Leslie Wagner Wilson, “Dear Dad,” FBI code: EE-1-uvwxyz-20.