Jonestown was the informal name for the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, an intentional community in northwestern Guyana formed by the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones. It became internationally notorious when, on November 18, 1978, 918 people died in the settlement as well as in a nearby airstrip and in Georgetown, Guyana's capital. The name of the settlement became synonymous with the incidents at those locations.

A total of 909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed "revolutionary suicide" by Jones and some members on an audio tape of the event and in prior discussions. This includes over 200 murdered children. The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others by Temple members at a nearby Port Kaituma airstrip. The victims included United States Congressman Leo Ryan. Four other Temple members died in Georgetown at Jones's command.

To the extent the actions in Jonestown were viewed as a mass murder, it was the largest such event in modern history and resulted in the largest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001.

Peoples Temple was a religious organization founded in 1955 by Jim Jones that, by the mid-1970s, included over a dozen locations in California including its headquarters in San Francisco. It is best known for the events of November 18, 1978, in Guyana, in which 918 people died at the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project (informally, and now commonly, called "Jonestown") and nearby airstrip at Port Kaituma, and Georgetown in an organized mass suicide/killing.

The mass suicide and killings at Jonestown resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural non-accidental disaster prior to the events of September 11, 2001. Casualties at the airstrip included, among others, Congressman Leo Ryan.

Before forming a church, Jim Jones had become enamored by communism and frustrated by the harassment communists received in the U.S. This, among other things, provided a seminal inspiration for Jones; as he himself described in a biographical recording,

Although he feared a backlash for being a communist, Jones was surprised when a Methodist superintendent (whom he had not met through the American Communist Party) helped him into the church, despite his knowledge that Jones was a communist. In 1952, Jones became a student pastor in Sommerset Southside Methodist Church in Indianapolis, but left that church because it barred him from integrating African Americans into his congregation. In 1954, Jones began his own church in a rented space in Indianapolis, at first naming it the Community Unity Church.

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.

The death tape or "Q042", is the final tape recorded by Jim Jones before the mass suicide of the residents of Jonestown in Guyana, in 1978. This recording includes Jones urging the members of the Jonestown community to come forward to receive the poison - first for their children, then for themselves - as Jones describes the horrors of what would await those who did not commit what he described as "revolutionary suicide".

Some debate has been raised as to the authenticity of the tape, owing largely to the number of edits audible; however, given the fact that other tapes generated by Peoples Temple also contain numerous edits, and given the fact that the tape refers to events quite specific to 18 November 1978, it seems likely that the tape is genuine in the sense that it was recorded on 18 November 1978. In the background of the tape there is what appears on casual listening to be organ music and/or choir singing; however, the tape has been analyzed carefully, and as it turns out, the music actually consists of several Delfonics songs (e.g., "I'm Sorry") copied onto the tape (played back at a much slower speed). Since the recording was stopped and started many times, the amount of time covered is somewhat longer than the length of the recording itself.

"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.

The earliest recorded use^{[citation needed]} of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." ^{[dubious – discuss]} In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.