{"id":27468,"date":"2013-06-16T00:20:20","date_gmt":"2013-06-16T00:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=27468"},"modified":"2024-06-10T16:47:33","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T23:47:33","slug":"q575","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=27468","title":{"rendered":"Q575 Transcript"},"content":{"rendered":"

Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGehee III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.<\/strong><\/i><\/p>\n

To return to the Tape Index, click here<\/a>.
\nTo read the Tape Summary, click here<\/a>. To listen to MP3, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Editor’s note<\/strong>: The Temple’s transcript of this tape appears here<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Jones: <\/b>My children have been threatened. An animal was beaten senseless\u2014 senseless unto death<\/i>. One cat was skinned uh\u2014 Another that was hung, that happened to belong to a neighbor of mine. I\u2019m going back over some time. Just this very week, uh, a call came through the San Francisco Temple from this area evidently, saying they were going to get my\u2014 my children at 12 o\u2019clock, knowing that my children were at home. We made the reports\u2014 We made the reports to the San Francisco law enforcement people. Our church has been threatened to be dynamited, uh, you would, uh\u2014 We are in a violent era. It disturbs me. I know, it\u2019s probably no more in America, it\u2019s certainly in Ireland, but if we don\u2019t do something about this, this anarchistic tendency, I think it\u2019ll break\u2014 break the spirit of this great republic.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:<\/b> Well, you mentioned uh, the uh, violence to animals. Were these um, uh, demonstrations that were put on uh, out uh, near your church, or uh, at your church?<\/p>\n

Jones: <\/b>They\u2014\u00a0You see, not having\u2014 Formerly<\/i>, not having our church properly guarded, which we now have it guarded night and day, 24 hours a day. They got into the animal shelter and did this brutality to animals. Senseless brutality. I\u2019m\u2014 I\u2019m overwhelmed, I\u2014 I\u2019m speechless that people would take their vengeance out against me, uh, by hurting little animals, or threatening my eight adopted children\u2014 or the\u2014 several of the adopted children I still have in my home. Or others<\/i>. The\u2014 the\u2014\u00a0the threats are incredible<\/i>. They don\u2019t seem to mind who<\/i> they threaten. They called the uh, rest home where\u2014 it\u2019s a self-managing. We believe in a kind of an innovating program. One of our seniors is a\u2014 one of the older people\u2014 run their own affairs, do their own cooking, and only call<\/i> on us, our nursing personnel and other professional people, as resource<\/i> people. And then, of course, we do the heavy domestic<\/i> duties. We have a lady there by the name of Mrs. [Marceline] LeTourneau living at that time. You\u2019ve probably heard of the LeTourneau family, a very uh, prominent Caucasian family. They called up and threatened this woman by name, an (deliberate tone) 86-year-old woman. Threatened<\/i> her. Now this is\u2014 this is absurd<\/i>. If they have an issue with me, I\u2019m the\u2014\u00a0I\u2019m a fearless individual. I\u2019d be glad to meet anyone and talk differences with\u2014\u00a0whatever their opinion, however hostile, if they would sit down as the old prophet said, Isaiah, and let us reason together. But this is uh, ridiculous and it\u2019s horrendous that they can threaten innocent people all around me. And all<\/i> I\u2019m guilty of is presenting my views as I see them. And I think we\u2019re guaranteed that, as last I remembered by freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly, and our right<\/i> to our religious convictions.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:<\/b> Right. And this is\u2014 this is what I\u2019m trying to accomplish here. I\u2019m hoping that uh, through our conversation, we could shed a little<\/i> bit of light on the situation and uh, perhaps to have some people to, to understand<\/i> uh\u2014 Maybe we could do some of that if\u2014 if you could give us um, a little bit of your background perhaps, how<\/i> you happened to come to Redwood Valley, um, where you came from, uh, I think uh, people\u2014 well, I\u2019ll speak for myself. I know little more than rumors.<\/p>\n

Jones: <\/b>I see. Well, let\u2019s, for instance, we were supposed to have run\u2014\u00a0been run out of Indiana. We came to this area because, as you have noticed<\/i> in recent articles, the Los Angeles Times<\/i>, for instance, carried quite a coverage of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and that they have open cross-burning meetings in our city. Having adopted minority children, children that were fathered by servicemen abroad as well as Caucasian children, a multi-racial family was under constant<\/i> threat. But contrary to being run out of the city of Indianapolis, the statement of the editorial of the Indianapolis Times<\/i>, Scripps-Howard paper, on the week of my departure, was “Reverend James Jones will be sorely<\/i> missed as executive secretary of the Mayor\u2019s Commission on Human Rights. He was hired after a long search. He was superb. He went about his job diplomatic\u2014 uh, diplomatically and fairly and produced the greatest results possible.” We received an editorial also in the uh, other paper, which is a much more conservative paper, the Star<\/i>, uh, which did pick up Mr. [Lester] Kinsolving\u2019s\u2014 part of his articles, not<\/i>, of course, knowing his sources again. His sources were totally<\/i> unreliable, and uh, he went to the uh, degree of sending uh, I mean, sending on his information there, but we have the best<\/i> relationships with the leadership\u2014\u00a0ecumenical leadership, the community leadership of Indiana. We came here with the hope<\/i> that California \u2014 having Indians here, all racial groups, a pretty cosmopolitan mixture \u2014 that we could uh, have some peace. And I\u2019d lived in the inner city, being a governmental employee, as well as a pastor. We had a ghetto church that served 2000 free meals to the poorest<\/i> of people for thirteen long years. And you might say we were tired from the battle, and my children\u2014 I felt like I somewhat had placed them on the altar of community service<\/i>. So some of us, the principal leaders, decided we would like to relocate, and establish our church here, not proselytize, no one in this community can ever say we\u2019ve rapped on a door or gone house-to-house trying to win anyone, uh\u2014 People who\u2019ve come to our church have come from the desperate world of drugs, and they\u2019ve been rehabilitated, a hundred and forty. Our people don\u2019t use drugs even, or alcohol or tobacco. We\u2019ve been told repeatedly from the law enforcement up and down this state, that once a person unites with our church, they\u2019ve never had any church\u2014\u00a0of any pri\u2014 any trouble with the law thereafter. We\u2019re a law<\/i>-abiding people.<\/p>\n

If this world was made up of as good<\/i> a people as we are, there\u2019d be peace. There would be no alienation. We\u2019re inclusive, we have Jewish, we have Christians of all varieties, we do have blacks. Another fear is, of course, I hear constantly, one of the local pastors who has been very supportive said, “Jim,” he said, “it all boils down to one thing. The fear<\/i> of the unknown, that every black person they see they think is a member of your church, and indeed, I see a lot of black people in the community that I<\/i> do not know.” Actually, the Redwood Valley church is 90%<\/i> Caucasian. We have very<\/i> few black people who have settled this area. Our black people in San Francisco who have jobs that\u2014 that far surpass anything they could get here, and there is no intention<\/i> of moving blacks in, but the reason they don\u2019t want<\/i> to move in, certainly they have the right to live here if they choose, but as this pastor said, a great deal of this is a fear, he said, it all boils down to that race question, that there\u2014 there\u2019s just a fear that we\u2019re going to be blanketed<\/i> with hundreds of black people, and I think we have four black business people here, and I think<\/i> about 25 black residents. Now that\u2019s not hardly a threat to the community\u2014 But it\u2019s the unknown again. I understood one person who\u2019s an executive in\u2014 in the lumber industry. He said, they used to tell our lumbering industry, they were going to bring in (Deliberate tone) 5000 blacks, and that rumor has passed through down the years, and I\u2014 I really<\/i> believe in being objective, and I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any subjective thing in this, that much<\/i> of this is this fe\u2014 fear, because we are inclusive, that we\u2019re going to somehow bring in hundreds and hundreds of black people, which we would not do to the black people (short laugh) in the first place, and we certainly wouldn\u2019t to an\u2014\u00a0the economic<\/i> picture. We have enough of a depressed economic problem, and our<\/i> people are gainfully employed. It\u2019s been hard to get<\/i> jobs. We don\u2019t have a\u2014\u00a0we don\u2019t have a person that\u2019s a shirker in our\u2014 in our midst<\/i>. We\u2019re good workers, hard workers, and so our employers tell us, we do a good job, but jobs<\/i> are not that plentiful, so we have no intention of moving people in here.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:<\/b> From what you\u2019re saying, however, it\u2014 it seems uh, quite clear, that at uh, at the root<\/i> of your uh, controversy, uh, your difficulty seems to be the racial issue.<\/p>\n

Jones: <\/b>I\u2019m afraid so. I\u2019d hoped<\/i> America had uh, grown up in these uh, years of uh, violence that we\u2019ve seen where a number of leaders have been\u2014\u00a0civil rights leaders have been killed, and there\u2019s been question that even maybe President [John] Kennedy was killed because of that, that he was a man of peace. I\u2014 I would hope<\/i> that this had gotten through. And indeed, to pastor in churches here, it has<\/i>. We\u2019ve had\u2014 I wouldn\u2019t name names, but I don\u2019t want any more trouble. I\u2019ve mentioned to you some of the individuals who\u2019ve been supportive. But uh, leadership<\/i> in this community is not lacking, as far as trying to bring understanding, but somehow, it doesn\u2019t get to the grass roots, um\u2014\u00a0and then, I think it\u2019s a vocal minority, because we have many supportive friends who make their feelings known<\/i>, and uh\u2014 I don\u2019t mean supportive in any material way, we get absolutely no outside help for our program, and we\u2014\u00a0from our funds, we\u2019ve helped cancer societies, every kind of\u2014 of group that ministers to physically handicaps uh\u2014\u00a0uh, handicapped individuals, as the [San Francisco<\/i>] Chronicle<\/i> just wrote a very good article saying that we were widely<\/i> known and highly respected for our social services, and we reach out to community projects of other denominations either\u2014 even, we\u2019re a very generous and\u2014 and charitable<\/i> people. Not<\/i> to mention that we educated a hundred and nine of our own people, two of them now under total<\/i> scholarship by our church in medical science, and then to think of the vast number we take care of who are senior citizens and children who we have guardianship over, who have not a penny of support, who are sent from troubled areas. But I think race \u2014 the unknown factor too \u2014 and that they magnify, that every black they see belongs to our church, which is not true, and then the one person called me from the filling station, he said a black person was very uncouth<\/i> there. And I said, that black person doesn\u2019t fit any<\/i> kind of description. Another one called me, very hatefully a few weeks ago, and said a black person was beating a horse<\/i>. I said, none of our black people own a\u2014\u00a0own a horse, and no black person that you described in my parish lives in the vicinity. So whoever this black person may or may have not been, it was not<\/i> a member of Peoples Temple Christian Church. And so, I think we fall prey to that, that every time a black person does something, and black people are just humans, like Methodists, Catholics, Irish, they\u2019re going to be bad and good, so when they see someone do something that is obnoxious or anti-social, they immediately conclude that they\u2019re a member of Peoples Temple, and not once<\/i> yet have we had a report of an anti-social act of a black person that was a member of our temple.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:<\/b> Will you give some indication of uh, the size of the membership uh, of your church?<\/p>\n

Jones: <\/b>I uh\u2014 to be accurate, I couldn\u2019t\u2014\u00a0it\u2019s uh, it\u2019s a growing church, particularly in the metropolitan area. We have a vast<\/i> membership in Los Angeles, about 2000 here, I suppose, um, 3000 in San Francisco, 4000 in Los Angeles. We\u2019re an active<\/i> church. We take care of our own people in the tradition of the scripture that says, take care first<\/i> of the household of faith. And we believe that the church, if it would do this more, there would be less danger of the increasing tentacles of big government and bureaucracy. This frightens us. Now some people think of us as a uh, I think again, a conspiratorial communistic group. We\u2019ve had people call up, “Commie lover, we\u2019re gonna kill you,” this that and the other. If there were any more anti-bureaucratic or big government or imperialistic, communistic, fascistic group than ours, I don\u2019t know how it could be. Now indeed, we\u2019re utopianist, in the terms of the Acts of the Apostles, where, when they received their baptism of the Holy Spirit of their ineffable union with Christ, they uh, shared and shared in every way, but again, we don\u2019t have people transferring properties to us, uh, they\u2019re not willing<\/i> us anything, we take offerings in routine ways, we have projects, like every other church, and\u2014\u00a0Instead of taking<\/i> from our people, we give far<\/i> more than we take. But being that we are united and very supportive of each other, that\u2014\u00a0that attracts<\/i> certainly in this day of alienation.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:<\/b> I think, Reverend Jones, that\u2019s one of the um, criticisms, um, accurately or not, uh, that many people seem to discuss, and that is that uh, the belief that\u2014 that you\u2019re getting rich, or that, if not you personally, then your church is somehow, uh, from your\u2014 your methods.<\/p>\n

Jones: <\/b>Well, if we\u2019re getting that rich, uh\u2014 You see, a church that is underwriting\u2014 We had one case where we had someone on dialysis who had no funds. We\u2019ve paid a hospital bill locally of one member who wasn\u2019t\u2014 he is\u2014\u00a0he isn\u2019t a member. He was not very firm in the church, but his wife was a good member, and he was generous enough to let her come<\/i> to church, and not give much money, really, but we paid an eight hundred dollar hospital bill. We\u2019ve paid veterinary bill. We\u2019ve paid back rent of people who were someway even indirectly related to this church, we\u2014 we buy locally. We\u2019re a tremendous<\/i> boost to the economy of this community. And generous? $5000 went for charities\u2014 ecumenical charities through Southern California last month, $5000 through Dr. [Karl] Irvin and the Christian churches of Northern California last month, uh, of a thousand dollars through Jewish<\/i> welfare agencies. And then I said, we\u2019ve had retarded children, we helped a local couple I didn\u2019t even know \u2014 it was on the front page of the newspaper \u2014\u00a0that was fighting for custody of a little child that had become like their own, and they didn\u2019t have legal fees. We didn\u2019t even bother<\/i>, we just asked in the local news media if they would channel it very quietly, or find out first if they would receive it, and we gave several hundred dollars to help them in their legal battles. You would be amazed<\/i> what we do locally. Uh, if we were to pull out of this community, there would be an economic depression, and a lot of people would be in hardship. We\u2019re<\/i> not trying to accumulate wealth. We\u2019re a service<\/i>-minded people. Indeed, we have to have a backlog of resources<\/i> in order to maintain a hundred and nine students. You don\u2019t educate a hundred and nine students in college uh, on a shoestring<\/i>, neither can you take care of senior citizens who don\u2019t have any funds. We don\u2019t impose people to remain<\/i> that way. If they choose to go on welfare, that\u2019s fine. But we have very few of our people in proportion. I would imagine we have less on welfare than any church of this size, by far.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:<\/b> Maybe it\u2019d be good to talk about uh, the effect on the local economy. Uh\u2014 How many people did you say you had locally?<\/p>\n

Jones: <\/b>Well, in the uh, total me\u2014 Redwood region here, and that would include some from Lakeport, I would say around 2000 people.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:<\/b> Well. It\u2019s considerable.<\/p>\n

Jones: <\/b>Good job supporting, and they buy<\/i> locally. We run an ad in the paper, oh, a couple of Christmases to buy<\/i> and support local, uh, businesses. And we do<\/i> that. Uh, and we\u2014 we do it conscientiously. So I think if people woke up, if we were pulled out of this community, it\u2019d be a terrible, terrible loss to a lot of businesses and\u2014 and hurt to the economy.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:<\/b> Are you having any thoughts in that direction?<\/p>\n

Jones: <\/b>Yes, I have anticipated it in the past, but I\u2019m not a person to run under fire. The worst way to get me to\u2014 now of course, you see, our church\u2019s centers are outside, they\u2019re bigger in Los Angeles and San Francisco. I have contemplated it. Our people do not wish to\u2014 I would not dream of trying to move 2000 people, no. But my headquarters may become more increasingly pointed towards a metropolitan area. But I would never<\/i> move under fire, because that\u2014 that represents a trend. Other good people then would suffer accordingly. If people\u2014 If bigots<\/i> or even poorly informed people who are frenzied from their own fear and paranoia, if they can get their\u2014 if they can achieve<\/i> running people out that way, no good person is safe. So I don\u2019t work that way. I\u2019d rather die than run under fire.<\/p>\n

Interviewer:<\/b> All right, Reverend Jones, our time has run out. Perhaps uh, we can explore uh, your Peoples Temple Church a little further uh, next week, when we continue our discussions. My guest this morning on Perspective<\/i> has been Reverend Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple church in Redwood Valley. This is Rob Basini [phonetic].<\/p>\n

Announcer: <\/b>Opinions expressed on this program were not necessarily those of KLIL, its staff or our advertisers.<\/p>\n

Station jingle<\/p>\n

Announcer: <\/b>You\u2019ve been listening to Perspective 73<\/i>, a weekly look at the issues and events that shape life in our Redwood Empire. This program was produced by the KLIL News Department and was prerecorded.<\/p>\n

Newscaster<\/b>: This is KLIL, Ukiah. Good morning. It\u2019s a minute before 11 o\u2019clock, 61 degrees. Time now for the latest news from United Press International, and the KLIL newsroom, brought to you by the Manor Inn, on North State Street, in Ukiah.<\/p>\n

Edward Uyour III [phonetic], member of a prominent East Bay medical family, was found shot to death yesterday in his car which was parked on an Oakland Street. There was no motive, and no suspect. He was the son of Dr. Edward Uyour, who passed away in 1971, and the grandson of still another Edward Uyour, who was Oakland City Health Officer and who died in 1965.<\/p>\n

Judge Matt Byrne has told Justice Department lawyers he wants new checks made to determine if any electronic surveillance had been conducted in the Pentagon Papers case.<\/p>\n

End of tape<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tape originally posted February 2003<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGehee III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you. To return to the Tape Index, click here. To read the Tape Summary, click here. To listen to MP3, click here. [Editor’s note: The Temple’s transcript of this tape appears here.] Jones: My children have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":27291,"menu_order":364,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-27468","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27468"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127440,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27468\/revisions\/127440"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}