Meet: Leslie Wagner Wilson

Leslie Wagner-Wilson currently resides in Phoenix, AZ and is a native of California.  On November 18, 1978 Leslie escaped Jonestown, Guyana with her son (then 3 years old) and nine others, trekking over 30 odd miles through the jungle and railroad tracks to a town called Matthews Ridge.  Within the following 24 hours, Leslie and the others would learn that Jim Jones had ordered the deaths of over 918 residents in the jungle community. Amongst the dead were her mother, Inez Wagner, husband Joe Wilson, sister Michelle, brother Mark and her niece Dawnyelle and nephew Daron. The group that led them out was headed by Richard Clark who she refers to as her Moses and a woman named Diane Louie who trusted her enough to allow her and her son to escape with them.

Slavery of Faith is her debut novel. Leslie serves on the Speakers Bureau for the Jonestown Institute and serves as a resource for information on the Peoples Temple and Jonestown. Leslie shares her experience through Inspirational /Public Speaking to churches, associations, women’s groups, homeless shelters and to “whoever wants to listen” in order to motivate and encourage that even in the most tragic of circumstances the resiliency of the human spirit can prevail; as she states, “To Whom Much Is Given, much is Required.” Leslie’s novel is sold internationally; Brazil, Singapore, Australia, Italy and other countries.

Ms. Wilson has been featured on the following cable networks; Three History Channel documentaries, CNN’s Investigative Report titled “Escape from Jonestown”; Live interview with TV Globo; Brazil’s and Latin America’s largest broadcaster, National Geographic’s “Seconds in Disaster”; Biography Channel “I Survived a Cult”; British Broadcasting Communications (BBC) “American Dreams”; and the New Ricki Lake Show. She has been interviewed on numerous radio shows – Artist First with Tony Kay; WGIV 103.3 with Tanya Rivens; John and Jen from Vancouver, Canada; Mancow Chicago; WRFG –Atlanta, and Iron Sharpens Iron and The Drew Marshall Show from Toronto, Canada. and a and. Her participation was requested to serve as a panelist at the National Action Network Annual Convention which was titled “It’s Okay to Ask for Help” moderated by publicist Terri Williams.

Leslie recently served as a panelist by author, feminist activist Sikivu Hutchinston, Ph.D. “White Nights, Black Paradise”, A Screening Discussion on Black Women, Peoples Temple and Jonestown at the Museum of African Diaspora in San Francisco, CA.

How do you overcome life’s challenges and crisis?  Ask Leslie- Leslie’s experience in Jonestown and the aftermath allowed her to understand who God is and resigns the work of Slavery of Faith. She credits her faith and resilience to the ever presence of God in her life, even when she did not recognize it.

Meet: Sikivu Hutchinson

Sikivu Hutchinson, Ph.D. is an educator and author who has written and published extensively on the African American experience in Peoples Temple and Jonestown.  She received her doctorate from New York University and her books include Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (2003), Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars (2011) and the novel White Nights, Black Paradise (2015), on Peoples Temple and Jonestown.  She also wrote, directed and produced a short film of White Nights, Black Paradise and is currently working on a stage adaptation. Her one act play, “Grinning Skull” was featured in the Robey Theatre Company’s 2017 Paul Robeson Festival. She has contributed chapters to The Oxford Handbook of Secularism and Gender and Planning from Rutgers University and her articles have been published in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Religion Dispatches, The Humanist Magazine and the L.A. Times.  She is also the founder of the Women’s Leadership Project, a feminist mentoring program for girls of color in South L.A.  Her forthcoming novel Rock ‘n’ Roll Heretic: The Life and Times of Rory Tharpe, is due in Fall 2018. Twitter @sikivuhutch