What we choose to remember and who we choose to forget still defines us today.
That’s why the infamous story about Peoples Temple isn’t simply a shocking event that happened in the past, it’s a mirror to our now, and if not handled with accuracy and care, it could well become a mirror into our future.
Peoples Temple – the movement and community – was rooted in the Bay Area and Southern California, where civil rights for Black and other historically-minoritized people, the LGBTQIA community, and women were at the forefront of a cultural awakening. Set in a complex period in American history, enmeshed in the contradictions of a post–Jim Crow America, the stories of Peoples Temple and the subsequent events at Jonestown have too often been reduced to the circumstances of their deaths, seemingly removing the people’s lives from the narrative.
The legacy of Peoples Temple has long been out of its own hands. As the decades pass, so do the memories of its people, their stories confined to archives, scattered recollections, and footnotes on websites like the Jonestown Institute. Rarely are they placed at the forefront of the mainstream.
The massive scale of ostensible “Peoples Temple” projects that are churned out every few years, especially during the years of significant anniversaries of 1978, remains starkly similar in their approach: the same players are discussed, the congregation is reduced to a statistic – “mostly women and children” – and Jim Jones remains at the center of the story.
That’s because the gatekeepers of who holds the power to create, and who opens the doors for others to be seen, have long been the same. As Black and Brown women working in film and TV, we know intimately how difficult it is to have our stories platformed and to retain ownership of them once, or even if, they see the light of day.
We began our journey into Peoples Temple almost eight years ago with a desire to reclaim the majority of its voices that were lost amongst their own carnage: the Black voices, and more specifically, the Black female voices whose labor, leadership, and love were the heartbeat of the community’s best work, and integral at every turn in its survival, structure, and influence within society at large.
That’s why we have dedicated to making sure that those who lost the most, gave the most, and received so little in return, tell their own stories, their way. After so many no’s, at some point, we had to stop asking – for permission, for understanding, for ownership, for validation that the story is worth telling – and to start insisting that it was never someone else’s to give you. It was yours to say all along.
The deeper we’ve gone into this project, the clearer it’s become how cyclical history can be. The same social fractures, the same manipulations of faith and belonging, the same inequalities that shaped Peoples Temple are still alive in our lives, society and politics today. The irony of the quote that hung above Jim Jones’ chair in the Jonestown pavilion – “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – has not been lost on us. The accuracy of history with its three-dimensional nuance isn’t just about the past. It’s about recognizing ourselves within it and refusing to let past erasures continue to determine the future.
Yes, it’s harder this way. It’s more uncertain, more costly, and more vulnerable. It’s also true, many TV and film sales executives care more about sensationalism than the people – it’s more uncertain, more costly, more vulnerable – but so is every act of reclamation. The investment isn’t just financial. It’s historical. Because when the victors write history, we have to ourselves must ask: who are they? The ones with power and money, or the ones with the stories that connect us? We’ve decided to stake everything on the belief that it’s those with the story who truly win.
Our upcoming work aims to return the narrative to those who lived it, survived it, and whose experiences make the story complete. Because the people of Peoples Temple are not the backdrop, they are the story. Now it’s time they be heard.
[Mariam Kanso (mariam.kanso@gmail.com) and Sarah Springer (sarah.springer@wearetissue.com) are documentarians who live on the West Coast.]