[JONESTOWN] [PEOPLES TEMPLE] Small archive of materials relating to the Peoples Temple and Reverend Jim Jones

JONES, Jim; Peoples Temple

Editore: [mostly San Francisco], 1975

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Lot of twelve ephemeral items of varying sizes, all produced by the Peoples Temple in California. Items in varying condition, from good to fine; mostly at least very good. Rev. Jim Jones founded the Peoples Temple in 1955 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Radical in politics from the beginning, Jones was passionate about Civil Rights, and focused on integration and maintaining a multiracial congregation for the duration of his project. Having more or less outgrown its conservative neighborhood in Indiana, Jones moved the congregation to San Francisco, where it continued to grow, even developing some good relationships with local Democratic politicians as a kind of social outreach organization. Jones, however, continued to become obsessed with power and control, and by 1977, he had moved, along with most of the church's most ardent members, to a rural area near Port Kaituma, Guyana. Called the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, this growing commune was hostile to outsiders from the beginning. When San Francisco-area Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown to investigate, the two had an uneasy meeting. When Ryan returned to the airstrip to fly back home, he and several others were shot and killed by Jones's henchmen. That same day, fearing the wrath of the American government, Jones ordered that his entire community commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced punch from a barrel. Accounts differ, and there are very few survivors from that day; however, it is clear that while many parishioners followed Jones's orders, a number of them were reluctant, and were forced to inject the poison against their will. While sensational headlines immediately following the event invariably referred to it as a "mass suicide," scholars, survivors, and family members of the victims have often preferred to call it a mass murder, or a massacre, or a mass homicide. The event was the largest single intentional mass killing of Americans until the attacks of September 11, 2001. This material, while mostly undated, clearly dates from the late 1960s or early 1970s, with PO Box addresses in San Francisco and Redwood Valley, CA. The material is as follows: 1. Two envelopes on slightly different People's Temple stationery, addressed to the same member (whose name is obscured deliberately in the listing image). Both torn along one side, with loss. On the reverse side of one of these is written in red ink: "no. 13-B Pastor Jim Jones." We are unsure of the significance here, but can at least say that the handwriting is not similar to any known signature of Jones himself. 2. A generic (un-personalized) greeting card featuring a photographic image of Jones and a young boy who this cataloguer suspects is one of his sons. A small pinhole at the top suggests that a parishioner had tacked the image up on their wall. 3. A lengthy one-page thank-you note, signed by People's Temple Secretary Irra J. Johnson, with much hagiography of Jones, and soliciting further donations from a Temple member (whose name and address are withheld by us). Johnson was tragically one of the victims of the Jonestown mass cyanide poisoning on November 18, 1978. It is unclear whether she served in a secretarial role during this period, but she clearly spent many years in the church. 4. A two-sided handbill, on one side advertising a new record album, featuring the People's Temple Choir and several soloists, including Jones himself. On the reverse side is an appeal for donations to fund the purchase of a second bus for the church's traveling mission. The two-sided mailed solicitation, with tear-off stubs on both sides, is efficiently arranged, so that one could tear off either or both stubs, to send in money for either the record, or for the bus donation, or both. 5. A folded brochure [4pp.], which on the back reads: "Just in from Jonestown!" With three images from photographs depicting church members hard at work, including one of Jones himself, this panel contains a three-paragraph des.

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• Titolo: [JONESTOWN] [PEOPLES TEMPLE] Small archive of materials relating to the Peoples Temple and Reverend Jim Jones
• Editore: [mostly San Francisco]
• Data di pubblicazione: 1975
• Cataloghi dei venditori:
  • Religion