Chalk line tool.

A chalk line or chalk box is a tool for marking long, straight lines on relatively flat surfaces, much farther than is practical by hand or with a straightedge.

It is an important tool in construction and carpentry, the working of timber in a rough and unplaned state, as it does not require the timber to have a straight or squared edge formed onto it beforehand.

Use[link]

A chalk line draws straight lines by the action of a taut nylon or similar string. Specifically, the string (previously impregnated or coated with a loose dye such as chalk) is laid across the surface to be marked and pulled tight. The string is then plucked or snapped sharply to cause the string to strike the surface, transferring the chalk to the surface along that straight line. Chalk lines can also be used across surfaces with holes in them, for example on an unfinished stud wall. As long as the line is taut and the two ends of the chalk line are in the same plane, the chalk line will mark all points on that plane that it touches once snapped.

The primary problems associated with improper maintenance of a chalk line are string breakage due to excessive tension on the line, and degradation of the line associated with moisture contamination.^[1]

Chalk lines and plumb-bobs are often sold as a single tool.^[2]

History[link]

Chalk lines have been in use since ancient Egypt, and used continuously by builders in various cultures since.

Continuing development of this simple but effective tool focuses on the coloration for the chalk or marking compound,^[3] as well as the outer case and method of handling.^[4]

Ink lines[link]

Sumitsubo and bamboo marking pens

In East Asia, an ink line is used in preference to a chalk line. This is a silken cord, stored on a combined reel and inkpot called a sumitsubo. Alongside the line reel is a cavity filled with ink-soaked cotton fibres, which the line is drawn through as it is unreeled. These sumitsubo are highly decorated and much-prized by their owners.^[5] As with many such tools, they're often made by their users while apprentices.^[6]

On the completion of a major building, such as a temple, a large celebration or topping-out ceremony is held. As part of this event, a set of symbolic carpenter's tools are freshly made and presented to the new building. A sumitsubo is a traditional tool included with them.^[7]

See also[link]

• Measuring tape

References[link]

External links[link]

• Chalk line – One person operation (video)
• Chalk line – Two-person operation (video)
• Hand-made chalk-line (video)

H.D. (born Hilda Doolittle; September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington. The Imagist model was based on the idioms, rhythms and clarity of common speech, and freedom to choose subject matter as the writer saw fit. H.D.'s later writing developed on this aesthetic to incorporate a more gynocentric version of modernism.

H.D. was born in Pennsylvania in 1886, and moved to London in 1911 where her publications earned her a central role within the then emerging Imagism movement. A charismatic figure, she was championed by the modernist poet Ezra Pound, who was instrumental in building and furthering her career. From 1916–17, she acted as the literary editor of the Egoist journal, while her poetry appeared in the English Review and the Transatlantic Review. During the First World War, H.D. suffered the death of her brother and the breakup of her marriage to the poet Richard Aldington,^[1] and these events weighed heavily on her later poetry. Glenn Hughes, the authority on Imagism, said of her 'her loneliness cries out from her poems. ^[2] She had a deep interest in Ancient Greek literature, and her poetry often borrowed from Greek mythology and classical poets. Her work is noted for its incorporation of natural scenes and objects, which are often used to emote a particular feeling or mood.

She befriended Sigmund Freud during the 1930s, and became his patient in order to understand and express her bisexuality.^[3] H.D. married once, and undertook a number of heterosexual and lesbian relationships. She was unapologetic about her sexuality, and thus became an icon for both the gay rights and feminist movements when her poems, plays, letters and essays were rediscovered during the 1970s and 1980s. This period saw a wave of feminist literature on the gendering of Modernism and psychoanalytical misogyny, by a generation of writers who saw her as an early icon of the feminist movement.^{[4] [5]}

Career[link]

Early life[link]

Hilda Doolittle was born into the Moravian community in Bethlehem in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley.^[6] Her father, Charles Doolittle, was professor of astronomy at Lehigh University^[7] and her mother, Helen (Wolle), was a Moravian with a strong interest in music. In 1896, Charles Doolittle was appointed Flower Professor of Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, and the family moved to a house in Upper Darby, an affluent Philadelphia suburb. She attended Philadelphia's Friends Central High School, at Fifteenth and Race streets, graduating in 1905. In 1901, she met and befriended Ezra Pound, who was to play a major role both in her private life and her emergence as a writer. In 1905, Pound presented her with a sheaf of love poems under the collective title Hilda's Book.^[8]

That year, Doolittle attended Bryn Mawr College^[9] to study Greek literature, but left after only three terms due to poor grades and the excuse of poor health. While at the college, she met the poets Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams. Her first published writings, some stories for children, were published in The Comrade, a Philadelphia Presbyterian Church paper, between 1909 and 1913, mostly under the name Edith Gray. In 1907, she became engaged to Pound. Her father disapproved of Pound,^[10] and by the time her father left for Europe in 1908, the engagement had been called off. Around this time, H.D. started a relationship with a young female art student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Frances Josepha Gregg.^[11] After spending part of 1910 living in Greenwich Village, she sailed to Europe with Gregg and Gregg's mother in 1911. In Europe, H.D. began a more serious career as a writer. Her relationship with Gregg cooled, and she met a writing enthusiast named Brigit Patmore with whom she became involved in an affair. Patmore introduced H.D. to another poet, Richard Aldington.

H.D. Imagiste[link]

Soon after arriving in England, H.D. showed Pound some poems she had written. Pound had already begun to meet with other poets at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in Soho. He was impressed by the closeness of H.D. poems's to the ideas and principles he had been discussing with Aldington, with whom he had shared plans to reform contemporary poetry through free verse, the tanka and the tightness and conciseness of the haiku, and the removal of all unnecessary verbiage. In summer 1912, the three poets declared themselves the "three original Imagists", and set out their principles as:

1. Direct treatment of the 'thing' whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome.^[12][13]

During a meeting with H.D. in a tea room near the British Museum that year, Pound appended the signature H.D. Imagiste to her poetry, creating a label that was to stick to the poet for most of her writing life.^[14] However H.D. told different versions of this story at various times, and during her career published under a variety of pseudonyms.^[15] That same year, Harriet Monroe started her Poetry magazine and asked Pound to act as foreign editor. In October, he submitted three poems each by H.D. and Aldington under the rubric Imagiste. Aldington's poems were in the November issue of Poetry and her poems "Hermes of the Ways," "Orchard," and "Epigram", in the January 1913 issue. Imagism as a movement was launched with H.D. as its prime exponent.

The early models for the Imagist group were from Japan, and H.D. often visited the exclusive Print Room at the British Museum in the company of Richard Aldington and the curator and poet Laurence Binyon in order to examine Nishiki-e prints that incorporated traditional Japanese verse.^[16][17] However, she also derived her way of making poems from her reading of Classical Greek literature and especially of Sappho,^[18] an interest she shared with Aldington and Pound, each of whom produced versions of the Greek poet's work. In 1915, H.D. and Aldington launched the Poets' Translation Series, pamphlets of translations from Greek and Latin classics. H.D. worked on the plays by Euripides, publishing in 1916 a translation of choruses from Iphigeneia at Aulis, in 1919 a translation of choruses from Iphigeneia at Aulis and Hippolytus, an adaptation of Hippolytus called Hippolytus Temporizes (1927), a translation of choruses from The Bacchae and Hecuba (1931), and Euripides' Ion (1937) a loose translation of Ion.^[19]

She continued her association with the group until the final issue of the Some Imagist Poets anthology in 1917. She and Aldington did most of the editorial work on the 1915 anthology. Her work also appeared in Aldington's Imagist Anthology 1930. All of her poetry up to the end of the 1930s was written in an Imagist mode, utilising spare use of language,^[20] and a classical, austere purity.^[21] This style of writing was not without its critics. In a special Imagist issue of The Egoist magazine in May 1915, the poet and critic Harold Monro called H.D.'s early work "petty poetry", denoting "either poverty of imagination or needlessly excessive restraint".^[22]

Oread, one of her earliest and best-known poems, which was first published in the 1915 anthology, illustrates this early style:

<poem>

    Whirl up, sea—
    Whirl your pointed pines.
    Splash your great pines
    On our rocks.
    Hurl your green over us—
    Cover us with your pools of fir.[23]

</poem>

World War I and after[link]

44 Mecklenburgh Square

Before World War I, H.D. married Aldington in 1913; however, their first and only child, a daughter, was stillborn in 1915. Aldington enlisted in the army. The couple became estranged and Aldington reportedly took a mistress in 1917. H.D. became involved in a close but platonic relationship with D. H. Lawrence. In 1916, her first book, Sea Garden, was published and she was appointed assistant editor of The Egoist, replacing her husband. In 1918, her brother Gilbert was killed in action, and that March she moved into a cottage in Cornwall with the composer Cecil Gray, a friend of Lawrence's. She became pregnant with Gray's child,^[24] however, by the time she realised she was expecting, the relationship had cooled and Gray had returned to live in London.^[25] When Aldington returned from active service he was noticeably traumatised, and he and H.D. later separated.

Close to the end of the war, H.D. met the wealthy English novelist Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman). They lived together until 1946, and although both took numerous other partners, Bryher remained her lover for the rest of H.D.'s life. In 1919, H.D. came close to death when she gave birth to her daughter Frances Perdita Aldington—although the father was not Aldington, but Gray—while suffering from war influenza.^[26] During this time, her father, who had never recovered from Gilbert's death, died. In 1919, H.D. wrote one of her few known statements on poetics,^[27] Notes on Thought and Vision, which was unpublished until 1982.^[28] In this, she speaks of poets (herself included) as belonging to a kind of elite group of visionaries with the power to 'turn the whole tide of human thought'.

H.D. and Aldington attempted to salvage their relationship during this time, but he was suffering from the effects of his participation in the war, possibly post-traumatic stress disorder, and they became estranged, living completely separate lives, but not divorcing until 1938. They remained friends, however, for the rest of their lives. From 1920, her relationship with Bryher became closer and the pair travelled in Egypt, Greece and the United States before eventually settling in Switzerland. Bryher entered a marriage of convenience in 1921 with Robert McAlmon, which allowed him to fund his publishing ventures in Paris by utilising some of her personal wealth for his Contact Press.^[29] Both Bryher and H.D. slept with McAlmon during this time. Bryher and McAlmon divorced in 1927.^[30]

Novels, films and psychoanalysis[link]

In the early 1920s, H.D. started to write three projected cycles of novels.^[31] The first of these, Magna Graeca, consists of Palimpsest (1921) and Hedylus (1928). The Magna Graeca novels use their classical settings to explore the poetic vocation, particularly as it applies to women in a patriarchal literary culture. The Madrigal cycle consists of HERmione, Bid Me to Live, Paint It Today and Asphodel, and is largely autobiographical, dealing with the development of the female artist and the conflict between heterosexual and lesbian desire. Kora and Ka and The Usual Star, two novellas from the Borderline cycle, were published in 1933. In this period, she also wrote Pilate's Wife, Mira-Mare, and Nights.

During this period her mother had died and Bryher had divorced her husband, only to marry H.D.'s new male lover, Kenneth Macpherson. H.D., Bryher, and Macpherson lived together and traveled through Europe as what the poet and critic Barbara Guest termed in her biography of H.D. as a 'menagerie of three'.^[32] Bryher and Macpherson adopted H.D.'s daughter, Perdita.^[6] In 1928, H.D. became pregnant but chose to abort the pregnancy in November. Bryher and Macpherson set up the magazine Close Up (to which H.D. regularly contributed) as a medium for intellectual discussion of cinema. In 1927, the small independent film cinema group POOL or Pool Group was established (largely funded with Bryher's inheritance) and was managed by all three.^[33] Only one POOL film survives in its entirety, Borderline (1930), which featured H.D. and Paul Robeson in the lead roles. In common with the Borderline novellas, the film explores extreme psychic states and their relationship to surface reality. As well as acting in this film, H.D. wrote an explanatory pamphlet to accompany it, a piece later published in Close Up.^[34]

In 1933, H.D. traveled to Vienna to undergo analysis with Sigmund Freud.^[35] She had an interest in Freud's theories as far back as 1909, when she read some of his works in the original German.^[36] H.D. was referred by Bryher's psychoanalyst due to her increasing paranoia about the rise of Adolf Hitler which indicated another world war, an idea that H.D. found intolerable. The Great War (World War I) had left her feeling shattered. She had lost her brother in action, while her husband suffered effects of combat experiences, and she believed that the onslaught of the war indirectly caused the death of her child with Aldington: she believed it was her shock at hearing the news about the RMS Lusitania that directly caused her miscarriage.^[37] Writing on the Wall, her memoir about this psychoanalysis, was written concurrently with Trilogy and published in 1944; in 1956 it was republished with Advent, a journal of the analysis, under the title Tribute to Freud.^[38]

World War II and after[link]

H.D. and Bryher spent the duration of World War II in London. During this time, H.D. wrote The Gift, a memoir of her childhood and family life in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which reflects on people and events in her background that helped shape her as a writer.^[39] The Gift was eventually published in 1960 and 1982.^[40] She also wrote Trilogy, published as The Walls do not Fall (1944), Tribute to the Angels (1945) and The Flowering of the Rod (1946). The opening lines of The Walls do not Fall clearly and immediately signal H.D.'s break with her earlier work:

<poem>

    An incident here and there,
    and rails gone (for guns)
    from your (and my) old town square.[41]

</poem>

After the war, H.D. and Bryher no longer lived together, but remained in contact. H.D. moved to Switzerland where, in the spring of 1946, she suffered a severe mental breakdown which resulted in her staying in a clinic until the autumn of that year. Apart from a number of trips to the States, H.D. spent the rest of her life in Switzerland. In the late 1950s, she underwent more treatment, this time with the psychoanalyst Erich Heydt.^[42] At Heydt's prompting, she wrote End to Torment, a memoir of her relationship with Pound, who allowed the poems of Hilda's Book to be included when the book was published. Doolittle was one of the leading figures in the bohemian culture of London in the early decades of the century. Her later poetry explores traditional epic themes, such as violence and war, from a feminist perspective. H.D. was the first woman to be granted the American Academy of Arts and Letters medal.^[9][9]

Later life and death[link]

During the 1950s, H.D. wrote a considerable amount of poetry, most notably Helen in Egypt (written between 1952–54), an examination from a feminist point of view of a male-centred epic poetry. H.D. used Euripides's play Helen as a starting point for a reinterpretation of the basis of the Trojan War and, by extension, of war itself.^[43] This work has been seen by some critics, including Jeffrey Twitchell-Waas, as H.D.'s response to Pound's Cantos, a work she greatly admired. Other poems from this period include Sagesse, Winter Love and Hermetic Definition. These three were published posthumously with the collective title Hermetic Definition (1972). The poem Hermetic Definition takes as its starting points her love for a man 30 years her junior and the line 'so slow is the rose to open' from Pound's Canto 106. Sagesse, written in bed after H.D. had broken her hip in a fall, serves as a kind of coda to Trilogy, being partly written in the voice of a young female Blitz survivor who finds herself living in fear of the atom bomb. Winter Love was written together with End to Torment and uses as narrator the Homeric figure of Penelope to restate the material of the memoir in poetic form. At one time, H.D. considered appending this poem as a coda to Helen in Egypt.^[44]

H.D. visited the United States in 1960 to collect an American Academy of Arts and Letters medal.^[45] Returning to Switzerland, she suffered a stroke in July 1961 and died a couple of months later in the Klinik Hirslanden in Zürich.^[46] Her ashes were returned to Bethlehem, and were buried in the family plot in the Nisky Hill Cemetery on October 28, 1961. Her epitaph consists of the following lines from her early poem "Let Zeus Record":

<poem>

    So you may say,
    Greek flower; Greek ecstasy
    reclaims forever
    one who died
    following intricate song's
    lost measure.[47]

</poem>

Legacy[link]

The rediscovery of H.D. began in the 1970s, and coincided with the emergence of a feminist criticism that found much to admire in the questioning of gender roles typical of her writings.^[48][5] Specifically, those critics who were challenging the standard view of English-language literary modernism based on the work of such male writers as Pound, Eliot and James Joyce, were able to restore H.D. to a more significant position in the history of that movement. Her writings have served as a model for a number of more recent women poets working in the modernist tradition; including the New York School poet Barbara Guest, the Anglo-American poet Denise Levertov, the Black Mountain poet Hilda Morley and the Language poet Susan Howe.^[49] Her influence is not limited to female poets, and many male writers, including Robert Duncan^[50] and Robert Creeley,^[51] have acknowledged their debt.

Selected works[link]

Poems[link]

Poetry collections[link]

• Sea Garden (1916)
• The God (1917)
• Translations (1920)
• Hymen (1921)
• Heliodora and Other Poems (1924)
• Hippolytus Temporizes (1927)
• Red Roses for Bronze (1932)
• The Walls Do Not Fall (1944)
• Tribute to the Angels (1945)
• Trilogy (1946)
• Flowering of the Rod (1946)
• By Avon River (1949)
• Helen in Egypt, New Directions (1961)
• Hermetic Definition, New Directions (1972)

Prose[link]

• Notes on Thought and Vision (1919)
• Paint it Today (written 1921, published 1992)
• Asphodel (written 1921-22, published 1992)
• Palimpsest (1926)
• Kora and Ka (1930)
• Nights (1935)
• The Hedgehog (1936)
• Tribute to Freud (1956)
• Bid Me to Live (1960)
• End to Torment: A Memoir of Ezra Pound, New Directions (1979)
• HERmione, New Directions (1981)
• The Gift, New Directions (1982)
• Majic Ring (written 1943-44, published 2009)
• The Sword Went Out to Sea (written 1946-47, published 2007)
• White Rose and the Red (written 1948, published 2009)
• The Mystery (written 1948-51, published 2009)

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Blau DuPlessis, Rachel. H.D. The Career of that Struggle. The Harvester Press, 1986. ISBN 0-7108-0548-9
• Chisholm, Dianne. H.D.'s Freudian Poetics: Psychoanalysis in Translation. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992.
• Connor, Rachel. H.D. and the Image. Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7190-6122-9
• Duncan, Robert. The H.D. Book. Edited and with an Introduction by Michael Boughn and Victor Coleman. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2011. ISBN 978-0-520-26075-7
• Friedman, Susan Stanford. Penelope's Web: Gender, Modernity, and H.D.'s Fiction. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990.
• Friedman, Susan Stanford. Psyche Reborn: The Emergence of H.D.. Indiana University Press, 1981.
• Guest, Barbara. Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World. Collins, 1985. ISBN 0-385-13129-1
• Jones, Peter (ed.). Imagist Poetry. Penguin, 1972.
• Korg, Jacob. Winter Love: Ezra Pound and H.D.. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. ISBN 0-299-18390-4
• Hughes, Gertrude Reif. "Making it Really New: Hilda Doolittle, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Feminist Potential of Modern Poetry". American Quarterly, Volume 42, No. 3, September, 1990. 375-401
• Morris, Adalaide. How to Live / What to Do: H.D.'s Cultural Poetics. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
• Robinson, Janice S. H.D., The life and work of an American poet. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982.
• Taylor, Georgina. H.D. and the public sphere of modernist women writers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Bovier, François. H.D. et le groupe Pool. Lausanne, L’Âge d’homme, 2009. ISBN 2-8251-3850-9
• Harrell, Sarah Grace, H.D.'s incantations: Reading "Trilogy" as an occultist's creed. M.A. diss. The University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2010. (118 pages.) AAT 1488037.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: H.D.

• Chronology of H.D.'s life and publications
• H.D. at Modern American Poetry
• Sea Garden
• Hymen
• Academy of American Poets

Jim Jones
Born	James W. Jones (1931-05-13)May 13, 1931 Randolph County, Indiana, U.S.
Died	November 18, 1978(1978-11-18) (aged 47) Jonestown, Guyana
Occupation	Religious leader
Religion	Agnostic/Atheist[1]
Spouse	Marceline Baldwin Jones (1927 - 1978)
Children	Agnes Paulette Jones (1943 - 1978) Suzanne Jones Cartmell (1953 - 2006) Stephanie Jones (1954 - 1959) Lew Eric Jones (1956 - 1978) Jim Jon Prokes (1975 - 1978) Stephan Gandhi Jones (1958- ) James Warren Jones, Jr. (1961-)
Parents	James Thurman Jones (1887 - 1951) Lynetta Putnam Jones (1902 - 1977)

Reverend James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 mass suicide of 909 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the killings of five other people at a nearby airstrip. Over 200 children were murdered at Jonestown, almost all of whom were forcibly made to ingest cyanide by the elite Temple members.

Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple in that state in the 1950s. Jones and the Temple later moved to California, and both gained notoriety with the move of the Temple's headquarters to San Francisco in the mid-1970s.

The incident in Guyana ranks among the largest mass suicides in history, though most likely it involved forced suicide and/or murder, and was the single greatest loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001. Among the dead was Leo Ryan, who remains the only Congressman assassinated in the line of duty as a Congressman in the history of the United States.^[2]

Early life[link]

Jim Jones was born in a rural area of Randolph County near the Ohio border,^[3] to James Thurman Jones (May 31, 1887 – May 29, 1951), a World War I veteran, and Lynetta Putnam (April 16, 1902 – December 11, 1977).^[4] He was of Irish and Welsh descent.^[5] Jones would later claim partial Cherokee ancestry through his mother, though this was likely false according to his maternal second cousin Barbara Shaffer.^{[5][note 1]} Economic difficulties during the Great Depression necessitated that Jones' family move to nearby Lynn, Indiana, in 1934.^[6] Jim Jones and a childhood friend both claimed that Jones' father was associated with the Ku Klux Klan.^[6]

In interviews for the 2006 documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, childhood acquaintances recalled Jones as being a "really weird kid" who was "obsessed with religion ... obsessed with death". They alleged that as a child, Jones frequently held funerals for small animals and had reportedly stabbed a cat to death.^[7]

Jones was a voracious reader as a child and studied Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler carefully,^[8] noting each of their strengths and weaknesses.^[8] After Jones' parents separated, he moved with his mother to Richmond, Indiana.^[9] He graduated from Richmond High School early and with honors in December 1948.^[10]

Jones married nurse Marceline Baldwin in 1949, and moved to Bloomington, Indiana.^[11] He attended Indiana University at Bloomington, where a speech by Eleanor Roosevelt about the plight of African Americans impressed him.^[11] Jones' sympathetic statements about communism offended Marceline's grandmother.^[11] In 1951, Jones moved to Indianapolis, where he attended night school at Butler University, earning a degree in secondary education in 1961.^[12]

Building the Temple[link]

Jim Jones' first church in Indianapolis, Indiana

Indiana beginnings[link]

In 1951, Jones became a member of the Communist Party USA, and began attending meetings and rallies in Indianapolis.^[13] He became flustered with harassment he received during the McCarthy Hearings,^[13] particularly regarding an event he attended with his mother focusing on Paul Robeson, after which she was harassed by the FBI in front of her co-workers for attending.^[14] He also became frustrated with ostracism of open communists in the United States, especially during the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.^[15] This frustration, among other things, provoked a seminal moment for Jones in which he asked himself "how can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church."^[13][14]

Jones' interest in religion began during his childhood, primarily because he found making friends difficult, though initially he vacillated on his church of choice.^[5] Jones was surprised when a Methodist superintendent helped him to get a start in the church even though he knew Jones to be a communist and Jones did not meet him through the Communist Party.^[15] In 1952, Jones became a student pastor in Sommerset Southside Methodist Church, but claims he left that church because its leaders barred him from integrating blacks into his congregation.^[13] Around this time, Jones witnessed a faith-healing service at the Seventh Day Baptist Church.^[13] He observed that it attracted people and their money and concluded that, with financial resources from such healings, he could help accomplish his social goals.^[13]

Jones then began his own church, which changed names until it became the Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel.^[13] The People's Temple was initially made as an inter-racial mission.

Jones moved away from the Communist Party and Maoists when CPUSA members and Mao Zedong became critical of some of the policies of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.^[15]

Integrationist[link]

In 1960, Indianapolis Democratic Mayor Charles Boswell appointed Jones director of the Human Rights Commission.^[16] Jones ignored Boswell's advice to keep a low profile, finding new outlets for his views on local radio and television programs.^[16] When the mayor and other commissioners asked Jones to curtail his public actions, he resisted and was wildly cheered at a meeting of the NAACP and Urban League when he yelled for his audience to be more militant, and climaxed with "Let my people go!"^[17]

During this time, Jones also helped to integrate churches, restaurants, the telephone company, the police department, a theater, an amusement park, and the Methodist Hospital.^[13] After swastikas were painted on the homes of two African American families, Jones personally walked the neighborhood comforting African Americans and counseling white families not to move, in order to prevent white flight.^[18] He also set up stings to catch restaurants refusing to serve African American customers^[18] and wrote to American Nazi leaders then leaked their responses to the media.^[19] When Jones was accidentally placed in the black ward of a hospital after a collapse in 1961, he refused to be moved and began to make the beds, and empty the bed pans of black patients.^[20] Political pressures resulting from Jones' actions caused hospital officials to desegregate the wards.^[20]

Jones received considerable criticism in Indiana for his integrationist views.^[13] White-owned businesses and locals were critical of him.^[18] A swastika was placed on the Temple, a stick of dynamite was left in a Temple coal pile, and a dead cat was thrown at Jones' house after a threatening phone call.^[19] Other incidents occurred, though some suspect that Jones himself may have been involved in at least some of them.^[19]

Jones' "Rainbow Family"[link]

Brochure of the Peoples Temple, portraying leader Jim Jones as the father of the "Rainbow Family"

Jim and Marceline Jones adopted several children of at least partial non-Caucasian ancestry; he referred to the clan as his "rainbow family,"^[21] and stated: "Integration is a more personal thing with me now. It's a question of my son's future."^[22] Jones portrayed the Temple overall as a "rainbow family."

The couple adopted three children of Korean-American ancestry: Lew, Suzanne and Stephanie. Jones had been encouraging Temple members to adopt orphans from war ravaged Korea.^[23] Jones had long been critical of the United States' opposition to communist leader Kim Il-Sung's 1950 invasion of South Korea, calling it the "war of liberation" and stating that "the south is a living example of all that socialism in the north has overcome."^[24] In 1954, he and his wife also adopted Agnes Jones, who was partly of Native American descent.^[22][25] Agnes was 11 at the time of her adoption.^[26] Suzanne Jones was adopted at the age of six in 1959.^[26] In June 1959, the couple had their only biological child, Stephan Gandhi Jones.^[25]

Two years later, in 1961, the Joneses became the first white couple in Indiana to adopt a black child, James Warren Jones, Jr.^[27] Marceline was once spat upon while she carried Jim Jr.^[19]

The couple also adopted another son, who was white, named Tim.^[25] Tim Jones, whose birth mother was a member of the Peoples Temple, was originally named Timothy Glen Tupper.^[22]

Asylum[link]

Belo Horizonte

Rio de Janeiro

Jones' Brazilian locations

After a 1961 Temple speech about nuclear apocalypse,^[20] and a January 1962 Esquire Magazine article listing Belo Horizonte, Brazil, as a safe place in a nuclear war, Jones traveled with his family to the Brazilian city with the idea of setting up a new Temple location.^[28]

On his way to Brazil, Jones made his first trip into Guyana.^[29] After arriving in Belo Horizonte, the Joneses rented a modest three bedroom home.^[30] Jones studied the local economy and receptiveness of racial minorities to his message, though language remained a barrier.^[31] Jones was careful not to portray himself as a communist in a foreign territory, and spoke of an apostolic communal lifestyle rather than of Castro or Marx.^[32]

After becoming frustrated with the lack of resources in the locale, in mid-1963, the Joneses moved to Rio de Janeiro.^[33] There, they worked with the poor in Rio's slums.^[33] Jones also explored local Brazilian religion.^[34]

Jones was plagued by guilt for leaving behind the Indiana civil rights struggle and possibly losing what he had struggled to build there.^[33] When Jones' associate preachers in Indiana told him that the Temple was about to collapse without him, Jones returned.^[35]

California Eden[link]

Los Angeles

San Francisco

Ukiah

Bakersfield

Fresno

Sacramento

Santa Rosa

Some of the Peoples Temple's California locations

After Jones' return to Indiana from Brazil, in 1965, Jones claimed that the world would be engulfed in a nuclear war on July 15, 1967, that would then create a new socialist Eden on earth, and that the Temple must move to Northern California for safety.^[13][36] Accordingly, the Temple began moving to Redwood Valley, California, near Ukiah.^[13]

While Jones always spoke of the social gospel's virtues, before the late 1960s Jones chose to conceal that his gospel was actually communism.^[13] By the late 1960s, Jones began at least partially openly revealing in Temple sermons his "Apostolic Socialism" concept.^[13] Specifically, "those who remained drugged with the opiate of religion had to be brought to enlightenment — socialism."^[37] Jones often mixed those concepts, such as preaching that "If you're born in capitalist America, racist America, fascist America, then you're born in sin. But if you're born in socialism, you're not born in sin."^[38]

By the early 1970s, Jones began deriding traditional Christianity as "fly away religion," rejecting the Bible as being white men’s justification to subordinate women and subjugate people of color and stating that it spoke of a "Sky God" who was no God at all.^[13] Jones authored a booklet titled "The Letter Killeth," criticizing the King James Bible.^[39] Jones also began preaching that he was the reincarnation of Jesus of Nazareth, Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha, Vladimir Lenin, and Father Divine. In the documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, former Temple member Hue Fortson, Jr. quoted Jones as saying, "What you need to believe in is what you can see ... If you see me as your friend, I'll be your friend. As you see me as your father, I'll be your father, for those of you that don't have a father ... If you see me as your savior, I'll be your savior. If you see me as your God, I'll be your God."^[7]

By the spring of 1976, Jones began openly admitting even to outsiders that he was an atheist.^[40] Despite the Temple's fear that the IRS was investigating its religious tax exemption, by 1977 Marceline Jones admitted to the New York Times that, as early as age 18 when he watched his then idol Mao Zedong overthrow the Chinese government, Jim Jones realized that the way to achieve social change through Marxism in the United States was to mobilize people through religion.^[36] She stated that "Jim used religion to try to get some people out of the opiate of religion," and had slammed the Bible on the table yelling "I've got to destroy this paper idol!"^[36] In one sermon, Jones said that, "You're gonna help yourself, or you'll get no help! There's only one hope of glory; that's within you! Nobody's gonna come out of the sky! There's no heaven up there! We'll have to make heaven down here!"^[7]

Move to San Francisco[link]

The move of Peoples Temple headquarters to San Francisco in 1975 invigorated Jones' political career. After the Temple served an important role in the mayoral election victory of George Moscone in 1975, Moscone appointed Jones as the Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission.^[41]

Unlike most other figures deemed as cult leaders, Jones was able to gain public support and contact with prominent local and national United States politicians. For example, Jones and Moscone met privately with vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale on his campaign plane days before the 1976 election and Mondale publicly praised the Temple.^[42][43] First Lady Rosalynn Carter also personally met with Jones on multiple occasions, corresponded with him about Cuba, and spoke with him at the grand opening of the San Francisco Democratic Party Headquarters where Jones garnered louder applause than Mrs. Carter.^[42][44][45]

In September 1976, Willie Brown served as master of ceremonies at a large testimonial dinner for Jones attended by Governor Jerry Brown and Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally and other political figures.^[46] At that dinner, while introducing Jones, Willie Brown stated "Let me present to you what you should see every day when you look in the mirror in the early morning hours.... Let me present to you a combination of Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein... Chairman Mao."^[47] Harvey Milk, who spoke at political rallies at the Temple,^[48] and wrote to Jones after a visit to the Temple: "Rev Jim, It may take me many a day to come back down from the high that I reach today. I found something dear today. I found a sense of being that makes up for all the hours and energy placed in a fight. I found what you wanted me to find. I shall be back. For I can never leave."^[49][50]

In his San Francisco Temple apartment, Jones hosted San Francisco radical political figures such as Angela Davis for discussions.^[51] He spoke with friend and San Francisco Sun-Reporter publisher Dr. Carlton Goodlett about Jones' remorse regarding not being able to travel to socialist countries such as Peoples Republic of China and the Soviet Union, speculating that he could be Chief Dairyman of the Soviet Union.^[52] After his criticisms caused increased tensions with the Nation of Islam, Jones spoke at a huge rally healing the rift between the two groups in the Los Angeles Convention Center attended by many of Jones' closest political acquaintances.^[53] Jones also enjoyed a favorable relationship with Warith Deen Mohammed, son of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.^{[citation needed]}

While Jones forged media alliances with key columnists and others at the San Francisco Chronicle and other media outlets,^[54] the move to San Francisco also brought increasing media scrutiny. After Chronicle reporter Marshall Kilduff encountered resistance to publishing an exposé, he brought his story to New West Magazine.^[55] In the summer of 1977, Jones and several hundred Temple members moved to the Temple's "Agricultural Project" in Guyana after they learned of the contents of Kilduff's article to be published in which former Temple members claimed they were physically, emotionally, and sexually abused.^[45][56] Jones named the settlement Jonestown after himself.

Jonestown's formation and operation[link]

Jonestown

Georgetown

Kaituma

Peoples Temple Agricultural Project ("Jonestown", Guyana)

Jones had first started building Jonestown in 1970 as a means to create both a "socialist paradise" and a "sanctuary" from the media scrutiny which had started in 1972.^[57] Here they also established a cooperative called the "People's Temple Agricultural Project". Regarding the former goal, Jones purported to establish Jonestown as a benevolent model communist community stating, "I believe we’re the purest communists there are."^[58] In that regard, like the restrictive emigration policies of the then Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea and other communist states, Jones did not permit members to leave Jonestown.^[59]

Religious scholar Mary McCormick Maaga argues that Jones' authority decreased after he moved to the isolated commune, because he was not needed for recruitment and he could not hide his drug addiction from rank and file members.^[60] In spite of the allegations prior to Jones' departure to Jonestown, the leader was still respected by some for setting up a racially mixed church which helped the disadvantaged; 68 percent of Jonestown's residents were black.^[61] Jonestown was where Jones began his belief called "Translation" where he and his followers would all die together and move to another planet and live blissfully.

New children[link]

Jim Jones claimed that he was the biological father of John Victor Stoen, although the birth certificate lists Grace and Timothy Stoen as the parents of the boy.^[62] The Temple repeatedly claimed that Jones fathered the child when, in 1971, Temple member Tim Stoen had requested that Jones have sex with Grace Stoen to keep her from defecting.^[63] After Grace Stoen later defected in 1976 and began divorce proceedings against Tim Stoen in 1977, in order to avoid potentially giving up the boy in a custody dispute with Grace, Jones ordered Tim to take John to Guyana in February 1977.^[64]

After purported father Tim Stoen defected from the Temple in June 1977, the Temple kept John Stoen in Jonestown.^[65] The custody dispute over John Stoen would become a linchpin of several battles between the Temple and the Concerned Relatives.^[66]

Jim Jones also fathered a son, Jim Jon (Kimo), with Carolyn Louise Moore Layton, a Temple member.^[67]

Pressure and waning political support[link]

Congressional Pictorial of Leo Ryan

While most of Jones' political allies broke ties after Jones' departure,^[68] some did not. As a show of support, Willie Brown spoke out against enemies at a rally at the Peoples Temple, also attended by Harvey Milk and Art Agnos.^[69] Most importantly for Jones and the Temple, Moscone's office shortly thereafter issued a press release saying that Jones had broken no laws.^[70]

In the Fall of 1977, Tim Stoen and other relatives in Jonestown formed a "Concerned Relatives" group.^[71] Stoen traveled to Washington D.C. in January 1978 to visit with Congressmen, including Leo Ryan and State Department officials, and wrote a "white paper" to Congress detailing the dispute and pressing for Congressional correspondence.^[72] Stoen's efforts aroused the curiosity of Ryan, who wrote a letter on Stoen's behalf to Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham.^[73]

Amidst growing pressure in the United States to investigate the Temple, on February 19, 1978, Harvey Milk wrote a letter of support for the Peoples Temple to President Jimmy Carter.^[74][75][76] Therein, Milk wrote that Jones was known "as a man of the highest character."^[76] Regarding the leader of those attempting to extricate relatives from Jonestown, Milk wrote he was "attempting to damage Rev. Jones reputation" with "apparent bold-faced lies."^[76]

On April 11, 1978, the Concerned Relatives distributed a packet of documents, including letters and affidavits, that they titled an "Accusation of Human Rights Violations by Rev. James Warren Jones" to the Peoples Temple, members of the press and members of Congress.^[77] In June 1978, escaped Temple member Deborah Layton provided the group with a further affidavit detailing alleged crimes by the Peoples Temple and substandard living conditions in Jonestown.^[78]

Facing increasing scrutiny, in the summer of 1978, Jones also hired noted JFK assassination conspiracy theorists Mark Lane and Donald Freed to help make the case of a "grand conspiracy" by intelligence agencies against the Peoples Temple.^[79] Jones told Lane he wanted to "pull an Eldridge Cleaver", referring to a fugitive Black Panther who was able to return to the United States after repairing his reputation.^[79]

Visit by Congressman Ryan, murders[link]

In November 1978, U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan led a fact-finding mission to Jonestown to investigate allegations of human rights abuses.^[80] Ryan's delegation included relatives of Temple members, Don Harris, an NBC network news reporter, an NBC cameraman and reporters for various newspapers.^[81] The group arrived in Georgetown on November 15.^[80] On November 17, Ryan's delegation traveled by airplane to Jonestown.^[82] The delegation left hurriedly the afternoon of November 18 after Temple member Don Sly attacked Ryan with a knife.^[83] The attack was thwarted, bringing the visit to an abrupt end.^[83] Congressman Ryan and his people succeeded in taking with them fifteen People's Temple members who had expressed a wish to leave.^[84] At that time, Jones made no attempt to prevent their departure.^[85]

Port Kaituma Airstrip shootings[link]

As members of Ryan's delegation boarded two planes at the airstrip, Jones' "Red Brigade" armed guards arrived in a tractor-pulled trailer and began shooting at the delegation.^[86] The guards killed Congressman Ryan and four others near a twin engine Otter aircraft.^[87] At the same time, one of the supposed defectors, Larry Layton, drew a weapon and began firing on members of the party that had already boarded a small Cessna.^[88] An NBC cameraman was able to capture footage of the first few seconds of the shooting at the Otter.^[87] The five killed at the airstrip were Congressman Ryan; Don Harris, a reporter from NBC; Bob Brown, a cameraman from NBC; San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson; and Temple member Patricia Parks.^[87] Surviving the attack were future Congresswoman Jackie Speier, then a staff member for Ryan; Richard Dwyer, the Deputy Chief of Mission from the U.S. Embassy at Georgetown; Bob Flick, a producer for NBC News; Steve Sung, an NBC sound engineer; Tim Reiterman, a San Francisco Examiner reporter; Ron Javers, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter; Charles Krause, a Washington Post reporter; and several defecting Temple members.^[87]

Deaths in Jonestown[link]

Later that same day, 909 inhabitants of Jonestown,^[89] 303 of them children, died of apparent cyanide poisoning, mostly in and around a pavilion.^[90] This resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the September 11, 2001 attacks.^[91] No video was taken during the mass suicide, though the FBI did recover a 45 minute audio recording of the suicide in progress.^[92]

On that tape, Jones tells Temple members that the Soviet Union, with whom the Temple had been negotiating a potential exodus for months, would not take them after the Temple had murdered Ryan and four others at a nearby airstrip.^[92] The reason given by Jones to commit suicide was consistent with his previously stated conspiracy theories of intelligence organizations allegedly conspiring against the Temple, that men would "parachute in here on us," "shoot some of our innocent babies" and "they'll torture our children, they'll torture some of our people here, they'll torture our seniors."^[92] Parroting Jones' prior statements that hostile forces would convert captured children to fascism, one temple member states "the ones that they take captured, they're gonna just let them grow up and be dummies."^[92]

Given that reasoning, Jones and several members argued that the group should commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced grape flavored Flavor Aid (not Kool-Aid despite the popular phrase). However, later released video made to show the best of Jonestown shows Jones opening a storage container full of Kool-Aid in large quantities. This may have been what was used to mix the "potion" (as was referred to in several statements obtained by the FBI in the final tape recordings) along with a sedative.^[92] One member, Christine Miller, dissents toward the beginning of the tape.^[92] When members apparently cried, Jones counseled, "Stop this hysterics. This is not the way for people who are Socialists or Communists to die. No way for us to die. We must die with some dignity."^[92] Jones can be heard saying, "Don't be afraid to die," that death is "just stepping over into another plane" and that it's "a friend."^[92] At the end of the tape, Jones concludes: "We didn't commit suicide; we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world."^[92] According to escaping Temple members, children were given the drink first and families were told to lie down together.^[93] Mass suicide had been previously discussed in simulated events called "White Nights" on a regular basis.^[78][94] During at least one such prior White Night, members drank liquid that Jones falsely told them was poison.^[78][94]

Jones was found dead in a deck chair with a gunshot wound to his head that Guyanese coroner Cyrill Mootoo stated was consistent with a self-inflicted gun wound.^[95] However, Jones' son Stephan believes his father may have directed someone else to shoot him.^[96] An autopsy of Jones' body also showed levels of the barbiturate Pentobarbital which may have been lethal to humans who had not developed physiological tolerance.^[97] Jones' drug usage (including LSD and marijuana) was confirmed by his son, Stephan, and Jones' doctor in San Francisco.

Other issues[link]

On December 13, 1973, Jones was arrested and charged with soliciting a man for sex in a movie theater bathroom known for homosexual activity, in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles.^[98] The man was an undercover Los Angeles Police Department vice officer. Jones is on record as later telling his followers that he was "the only true heterosexual", but at least one account exists of his sexual abuse of a male member of his congregation in front of the followers, ostensibly to prove the man's own homosexual tendencies.^[98]

While Jones banned sex among Temple members outside of marriage, he himself voraciously engaged in sexual relations with both male and female Temple members.^[99][100] Jones, however, claimed that he detested engaging in homosexual activity and did so only for the male temple adherents' own good, purportedly to connect them symbolically with him (Jones).^[99]

One of Jones' sources of inspiration was the controversial International Peace Mission movement leader Father Divine.^[101] Jones had borrowed the term "revolutionary suicide"^[102] from Black Panther leader and Peoples Temple supporter Huey Newton who had argued "the slow suicide of life in the ghetto" ought to be replaced by revolutionary struggle that would end only in victory (socialism and self determination) or revolutionary suicide (death).^{[citation needed]}

Family aftermath[link]

Marceline

Jim Jones' wife, Marceline, was found poisoned at the pavilion.^[103] On the final morning of Ryan's visit, Marceline had taken reporters on a tour of Jonestown.^[104]

Stephan, Jim Jr. and Tim Jones

Stephan, Jim Jr., and Tim Jones did not take part in the mass suicide because they were playing with the Peoples Temple basketball team against the Guyanese national team in Georgetown.^[25][102] At the time of events in Jonestown, Stephan and Tim were both nineteen and Jim Jones Jr. was eighteen.^[105] Tim's biological family, the Tuppers, which consisted of his three biological sisters,^{[106][107][108]} biological brother,^[109] and biological mother,^[110] all died at Jonestown. Three days before the tragedy, Stephan Jones refused, over the radio, to comply with an order by his father to return the team to Jonestown for Ryan's visit.^[111]

During the events at Jonestown, Stephan, Tim, and Jim Jones Jr. drove to the American Embassy in Guyana in an attempt to receive help. The Guyanese soldiers guarding the embassy refused to let them in after hearing about the shootings at the Port Kaituma airstrip.^[112] Later, the three returned to the Temple's headquarters in Georgetown to find the bodies of Sharon Amos and her three children.^[112] Guyanese soldiers kept the Jones brothers under house arrest for five days, interrogating them about the deaths in Georgetown.^[112] Stephan Jones was accused of being involved in the Georgetown deaths, and was placed in a Guyanese prison for three months.^[112] Tim Jones and Johnny Cobb, another member of the Peoples Temple basketball team, were asked to go to Jonestown and help identify the bodies of people who had died.^[112] After returning to the United States, Jim Jones Jr. was placed under police surveillance for several months while he lived with his older sister, Suzanne, who had previously turned against the Temple.^[112]

When Jonestown was first being established, Stephan Jones had originally avoided two attempts by his father to relocate to the settlement. He eventually moved to Jonestown after a third and final attempt. He has since said that he gave into his father's wishes to move to Jonestown because of his mother.^[113] Stephan Jones is now a businessman, and married with three daughters. He appeared in the documentary Jonestown: Paradise Lost which aired on the History Channel and Discovery Channel. He stated he will not watch the documentary and has never grieved for his father.^[114] Jim Jones Jr., who lost his wife and unborn child at Jonestown, returned to San Francisco. He remarried and has three sons from this marriage,^[102] including Rob Jones, a high-school basketball star who went on to play for the University of San Diego before transferring to Saint Mary's College of California.^[115]

Lew, Agnes and Suzanne Jones

Lew and Agnes Jones both died at Jonestown. Agnes Jones was thirty-five years old at the time of her death.^[116] Her husband^[117] and four children^{[118][119][120][121]} all died at Jonestown. Lew Jones, who was twenty-one years old at the time of his death, died alongside his wife Terry and son Chaeoke.^{[122][123][124]} Stephanie Jones had died at age five in a car accident.^[25]

Suzanne Jones married Mike Cartmell; both turned against the Temple and were not in Jonestown on November 18, 1978. After this decision to abandon the Temple, Jones referred to Suzanne openly as "my goddamned, no good for nothing daughter" and stated that she was not to be trusted.^[125] In a signed note found at the time of her death, Marceline Jones directed that the Jones' funds were to be given to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and specified: "I especially request that none of these are allowed to get into the hands of my adopted daughter, Suzanne Jones Cartmell."^[126] Cartmell had two children and died of colon cancer in November 2006.^[127][128] Found near Marceline Jones' body was a signed and witnessed will leaving all bank accounts "in my name" to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and writing that Suzanne Jones Cartmell should receive no assets.^[129]

John Stoen and Kimo

Specific references to Tim Stoen, the father of John Stoen, including the logistics of possibly murdering him, are made on the Temple's final "death tape," as well as a discussion over whether the Temple should include John Stoen among those committing "revolutionary suicide."^[92] At Jonestown, John Stoen was found poisoned in Jim Jones' cabin.^[130]

Both Jim Jon (Kimo) and his mother, Carolyn Louise Moore Layton, died during the events at Jonestown.^[131]

See also[link]

• Cult suicide
• Doomsday cult
• List of people who have claimed to be Jesus
• List of Buddha claimants

References[link]

Explanatory notes

Citations

Bibliography

• Chidester, David, Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the People's Temple and Jonestown (Religion in North America), 2nd rev.ed., Indiana University Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-253-21632-8
• Klineman, George and Sherman Butler. The Cult That Died. G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1980. ISBN 0-399-12540-X.
• Layton, Deborah. Seductive Poison. Anchor Books, 1999. ISBN 0-385-48984-6.
• Maaga, Mary McCormick. Hearing the voices of Jonestown. Syracuse University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8156-0515-3.
• Naipaul, Shiva. Black & White. Hamish Hamilton, London, 1980. ISBN 0-241-10337-1.
• Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs (1982). Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton. ISBN 0-525-24136-1. 

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jim Jones

• The Jonestown Institute
• FBI No. Q 042 The "Jonestown Death Tape", Recorded 18 November 1978 (Internet Archive)
• Transcript of Jones' final speech, just before the mass suicide
• The first part of a series of articles about Jim Jones published in the San Francisco Examiner in 1972.
• History Channel Video and Stills
• Isaacson, Barry. From Silver Lake to Suicide: One Family's Secret History of the Jonestown Massacre
• Mass Suicide at Jonestown: 30 Years Later, Time magazine
• Jonestown 30 Years Later photo gallery published Friday, October 17, 2008.
• Rapaport, Richard. Jonestown and City Hall slayings eerily linked in time and memory Both events continue to haunt city a quarter century later
• Nakao, Annie.The ghastly Peoples Temple deaths shocked the world. Berkeley Rep takes on the challenge of coming to terms with it.
• American Experience documentary, "Jonestown: The Life And Death Of Peoples Temple", shown on PBS
• Jonestown: 25 Years Later How spiritual journey ended in destruction: Jim Jones led his flock to death in jungle by Michael Taylor, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Published Thursday, November 12, 1998.
• Utopian nightmare Jonestown: What did we learn? Larry D. Hatfield, of The Examiner staff, Gregory Lewis and Eric Brazil of The Examiner staff and Examiner Librarian Judy Canter contributed to this report. Published Sunday, November 8, 1998.
• Jones Captivated S.F.'s Liberal Elite: They were late to discover how cunningly he curried favor by Michael Taylor, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. And [Haunted by Memories of Hell ] by Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Published Thursday, November 12, 1998. Both stories were included in the first of a two-part series.
• The End To Innocent Acceptance Of Sects Sharper scrutiny is Jonestown legacy by Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle religion writer. And Most Peoples Temple Documents Still Sealed by Michael Taylor and Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. And Surviving the Heart of Darkness: Twenty years later, Jackie Speier remembers how her companions and rum helped her endure the night of the Jonestown massacre by Maitland Zane, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Published Friday, November 13, 1998. All stories were included in the second part of a two-part series.
• Inside Peoples Temple Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy, Used by permission of authors for the San Francisco Chronicle. Published Monday, August 1, 1977.