{"id":80741,"date":"2018-08-09T13:55:11","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T20:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=80741"},"modified":"2025-02-19T11:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T19:53:09","slug":"my-peoples-temple-christian-church-experience","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=80741","title":{"rendered":"My Peoples Temple Christian Church Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

To read the German translation of this article, click here<\/strong><\/a>.
\nEine deutsche \u00dcbersetzung dieses Texts finden Sie hier<\/strong>.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Elnora Ward and grand-daughter Zsa-Zsa Carter, 1970s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I grew up in the city of Compton, California, then moved to Watts, and then back to the same house in Compton. I went to Peoples Temple in Los Angeles with my grandmother until I was 12 years old. It was a friendly church. Well, it was the only church that I knew. We were like a big gigantic family. No matter the color of skin, everyone got along well. \u00a0All colors were united together, and it was really wonderful to me. If I wasn\u2019t at church, I was at school.<\/p>\n

I was only 12 when I heard the news about Guyana on the radio. Young. Listening to the radio was my pastime in those days. When the music was interrupted for a news bulletin on 1580 K-Day, I just changed the station, because that record that was interrupted wasn\u2019t one of my favorite songs anyway. I changed the radio station to 1230 KGFJ. The song that was interrupted this time was by Bobby Caldwell titled, \u201cWhat You Won\u2019t Do for Love.\u201d I loved that song, because it was my sister\u2019s favorite, and I knew the words to it, and I kept on singing it through the interruption. I didn\u2019t really listen\u00a0<\/em>to what the news said until a few seconds later.<\/p>\n

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks! More than 900 people had drunk cyanide-laced Kool-Aid and died. I didn\u2019t know what cyanide was then, but then I saw a photo of all of these black people lying dead on the ground. I couldn\u2019t believe it. This was where my great-grandmother was. This was also where we were supposed to be moving to ourselves, as soon as my grandmother\u2019s birth certificate came through in the mail. Wow. I was devastated.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Zsa-Zsa Carter, 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My grandmother immediately calling other family members to ask if they had also heard about it. And then she saw it herself on the Channel 7 news. And after that fateful day, she was never the same.<\/p>\n

Something changed in me, too. I grew spiteful and sarcastic. I stopped believing in God, because he had done this to my great-grandmother and he had done this to my grandmother. That was the start of my delinquency. I ended up going to juvenile hall in search of a family that loved me.<\/p>\n

Let me show you what that day did to me. Let\u2019s talk about the people in Guyana who were my true friends and who died over there:<\/p>\n

Gladys Roberts:\u00a0<\/strong>My beloved great-grandmother, who used to live at 10221 Clovis Avenue in Los Angeles, believed that this monster Jim Jones was a god.<\/p>\n

Wanda Mitchell<\/strong>: The girl who taught me how to French-braid hair was my best friend. She had a big family, and they all treated me like I was a part of it. I spent many nights over at their house on 50th and Avalon in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Wanda Baisy<\/strong>: She taught me how to stand up to boys and beat them up when I used to be scared of them.<\/p>\n

Shirley and Ben Robinson<\/strong>: These were my Aunt Shirley\u2019s best friends and neighbors who used to visit us.<\/p>\n

Heloise Hall: <\/strong>The organist at the church, her daughter ended up moving into my grandmother\u2019s home on Clovis Avenue.<\/p>\n

Delicia Souder:\u00a0<\/strong>This girl who with the Mitchells\u2019, and I used to play with her when I went over there to their house on the weekends. It was me, her, and Wanda (though she was younger than we were).<\/p>\n

James Turner:\u00a0<\/strong>I knew their whole family also, but he was the only one that went. The other members of his family were preparing to go also.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t think that anyone who were related to this tragedy has been the same. I am 52 years old now, and I have experienced a lot of things, but this is the worst tragedy that I have experienced, if only because of the simple fact that these people trusted this man who did them so dirty. My great-grandmother gave this man her all, and this is how she was repaid. I didn\u2019t understand then, but now I do. He was a con-artist and he conned all of these people, and they believed him, and they all died.<\/p>\n

(Jesselle Carter can be reached at cjesselle@yahoo.com<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To read the German translation of this article, click here. Eine deutsche \u00dcbersetzung dieses Texts finden Sie hier. I grew up in the city of Compton, California, then moved to Watts, and then back to the same house in Compton. I went to Peoples Temple in Los Angeles with my grandmother until I was 12 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":81147,"menu_order":11,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-80741","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/80741","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80741"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/80741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93103,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/80741\/revisions\/93103"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}