Throughout the final years of Peoples Temple\u2019s existence, both in California and in Jonestown, Jim Jones spoke on numerous occasions about the federal government\u2019s plans to round up members of various minority populations \u2013 but most especially, blacks \u2013 as well as political dissidents, and to put them in concentration camps. For example:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Q 972<\/a>, recorded in August 1973, includes Jones\u2019 statement: \u201cSpiritual wickedness in high places is going to come to take people and put them in jails. Right now, they\u2019re trying to get an executive order passed that will empower the president of this United States to put people in concentration camps without one consultation with Congress. Now it won\u2019t happen to you, but you\u2019ve got to cooperate with me. You want to be free? Then cooperate with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 In Q 962<\/a>, recorded the same year, the concentration camp reference is part of a larger warning about the approaching tyranny: \u201cYou go home and read \u2026 Executive Order 11490 and 11647. You go home and read it. Right now, they\u2019re preparing to set up a dictatorship \u2013 it\u2019s already written into law \u2013 that will give the president power to move people wherever he wants to, to put them in concentration camps, to take over every street car line, over every transportation, over every farm, over every office, over every factory. He\u2019ll put serial numbers and a mark of the beast right on you. You\u2019ll not be anymore a person, you\u2019ll be a number. And every black and brown and poor white will be done away with.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 In Q 987<\/a>, recorded in Philadelphia in 1977, Jones describes where the idea came from: \u201cI heard it from the heads of the government of the United States today, \u2019cause I just come in from Washington, just flew in on the plane from the conference with the top notch leaders. I listen to them talk about planned takeovers. \u2026 Task force warns nation to get ready for riots and to get ready for martial law and to get ready for concentration camps. \u2026 Get ready for identification marks to be put on your body and identification number, even if necessary tattooed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The warnings appears in Jonestown audiotapes as well.<\/p>\n
\u2022 During the course of news tape Q 741<\/a>, Jones reminds the people of Jonestown of the evils back home: \u201cNo guarantees ever exist in the United States of capitalist fascism. Your children are always a prey of a drug-pusher, the system in crime, youth and adult gangs, and then finally, genocidal patterns of ethnic weapons and concentration camps in which our people would have been destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 On Q 637<\/a>, recorded during a White Night in April 1978, the image comes through as part of a large list of evils: \u201cI came to save you from jails, torture, concentration camps, a nuclear war which your skin will roll off your back.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Periodically, Jones even mentions the proposal giving the president the authority for such internment:<\/p>\n
\u2022 In Q 1059-2<\/a>, a sermon from 1972: \u201cThey got plans\u2026 There\u2019s a plan already laid aside to put you in gas chambers. It\u2019s called King Alfred Plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 In Q 957<\/a>, an address from 1973: \u201cWe have this discussion of King Alfred Plan here, we have the discussion \u2026 that the past cabinet just approved, which will be the total annihilation of the black race.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 In the 1977 Philadelphia sermon Q 987<\/a> mentioned above: \u201cthere\u2019s a plan called King Alfred Plan that has, not only concentration camps in store for we who are black, but the absolute annihilation.\u201d<\/p>\n