Related Research Articles
The history of Guyana begins about 35,000 years ago with the arrival of humans coming from Eurasia. These migrants became the Carib and Arawak tribes, who met Alonso de Ojeda's first expedition from Spain in 1499 at the Essequibo River. In the ensuing colonial era, Guyana's government was defined by the successive policies of the French, Dutch, and British settlers. During the colonial period, Guyana's economy was focused on plantation agriculture, which initially depended on slave labor. Guyana saw major slave rebellions in 1763 and 1823. Following the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa were freed, resulting in plantations contracting indentured workers, mainly from India. Eventually, these Indians joined forces with Afro-Guyanese to demand equal rights in government and society. After the Second World War, the British Empire pursued policy decolonization of its overseas territories, with independence granted to British Guiana on May 26, 1966. Following independence, Forbes Burnham rose to power, quickly becoming an authoritarian leader, pledging to bring socialism to Guyana. His power began to weaken following international attention brought to Guyana in wake of the Jonestown mass murder suicide in 1978.
The Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, originally Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church and commonly shortened to Peoples Temple, was an American new religious organization which existed between 1954 and 1978 and was affiliated with the Christian Church. Founded by Jim Jones in Indianapolis, Indiana, the Peoples Temple spread a message that combined elements of Christianity with communist and socialist ideology, with an emphasis on racial equality. After Jones moved the group to California in the 1960s and established several locations throughout the state, including its headquarters in San Francisco, the Temple forged ties with many left-wing political figures and claimed to have 20,000 members.
The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name "Jonestown", was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, an American cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationally infamous when, on November 18, 1978, a total of 918 people died at the settlement, at the nearby airstrip in Port Kaituma, and at a Temple-run building in Georgetown, Guyana's capital city. The name of the settlement became synonymous with the incidents at those locations.
James Warren Jones was an American cult leader and mass murderer who led the Peoples Temple between 1955 and 1978. In what Jones termed "revolutionary suicide", Jones and the members of his inner circle planned and orchestrated a mass murder-suicide in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978. Jones and the events that occurred at Jonestown have had a defining influence on society's perception of cults.
Leo Joseph Ryan Jr. was an American teacher and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the U.S. representative from California's 11th congressional district from 1973 until his assassination just prior to the Jonestown massacre in 1978. Before that, he served in the California State Assembly, representing the state's 27th district.
George Richard Moscone was an attorney and Democratic politician who was the 37th mayor of San Francisco, California from January 1976 until his assassination in November 1978. He was known as "The People's Mayor," who opened up City Hall and its commissions to reflect the diversity of San Francisco, appointing African Americans, Asian Americans, and gay people. Moscone served in the California State Senate from 1967 until becoming mayor. In the Senate, he served as majority leader. Moscone is remembered for being an advocate of civil progressivism.
Brindley Horatio Benn, CCH was a teacher, choirmaster, politician, and one of the key leaders of the Guyanese independence movement. He was put under restriction when the constitution was suspended in 1953. In 1957, Benn served as Minister of Community Development and Education in the first elected government of Guyana, and between 1961 and 1964 as Minister of Natural Resources. From 1993 to 1998, he served as High Commissioner of Guyana to Canada.
Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham was a Guyanese politician and the leader of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana from 1964 until his death in 1985. He served as Premier of British Guiana from 1964 to 1966, Prime Minister of Guyana from 1964 to 1980 and then as the first executive president of Guyana from 1980 to 1985. He is often regarded as a strongman who embraced his own version of socialism.
Don Harris was an NBC News correspondent who was killed after departing Jonestown, an agricultural commune owned by the Peoples Temple in Guyana. On November 18, 1978, he and four others were killed by gunfire by Temple members at a nearby airstrip in Port Kaituma, Guyana. Their murders preceded the death of 909 Temple members in Jonestown and four Temple members in Georgetown, Guyana.
Charles R. Garry was an American civil rights attorney who represented a number of high-profile clients in political cases during the 1960s and 1970s, including Huey P. Newton during his 1968 capital murder trial and the Peoples Temple during the 1978 Jonestown tragedy.
Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones is a 1980 American biographical drama television miniseries directed by William A. Graham from a teleplay by Ernest Tidyman, based on the 1978 book Guyana Massacre: The Eyewitness Account by Charles A. Krause. It stars Powers Boothe in the title role, with Ned Beatty, LeVar Burton, Colleen Dewhurst, James Earl Jones, and Randy Quaid in supporting roles. It is a dramatization of the life of murderous cult leader Jim Jones, who led a mass murder of his Peoples Temple followers in Jonestown, Guyana.
Jeannie Mills, formerly Deanna Mertle, was an early defector from the Peoples Temple organization headed by Jim Jones. With her husband and Elmer Mertle, she co-founded the Concerned Relatives of Peoples Temple Members organization in 1977. Mills was murdered in 1980 along with her husband and one of her daughters, in a killing which remains unsolved.
Black & White is a non-fiction book written by Shiva Naipaul and published by Hamish Hamilton in the U.K. in 1980. It was published with the title Journey to Nowhere: A New World Tragedy in the U.S. The book is based on Naipaul's trip to Guyana in the aftermath of the Jonestown Massacre, and his subsequent trip to the United States, in which he explored links between the People's Temple and other groups and individuals. Naipaul attempted to connect Rev. Jim Jones, founder of the People's Temple, with disparate parts of California's counterculture, and Guyanese and other Third World governments and the revolutionary ideologies which supported them. Naipaul was highly critical of these and other movements, including black theology, the nascent New Age movement and EST, in as much as they helped, in his analysis, to create fertile ground for the People's Temple to flourish on the two continents. The book's US paperback cover tagline reads "How American ideas and ideologies led to the mass suicide of 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana."
Guyana: Crime of the Century is a 1979 English-language Mexican exploitation drama film written and directed by René Cardona Jr. The film, which was shot in Mexico, is based on the Jonestown Massacre. It stars a number of American actors such as Stuart Whitman, Gene Barry and Joseph Cotten. The names of central characters are slightly tweaked from the historical ones: the film is set in "Johnsontown" rather than Jonestown, the cult is led by "Reverend James Johnson" (Whitman) rather than Rev. Jim Warren Jones, and the murdered Congressman is "Lee O'Brien" (Barry) rather than Leo Ryan.
Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People details the life and ultimate demise of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. Written by journalist Tim Reiterman, the book reviews the history of the Peoples Temple. The book includes numerous interviews, audio tapes and documents among its hundreds of sources.
Timothy Oliver Stoen is an American attorney best known for his central role as a member of the Peoples Temple, and as an opponent of the group during a multi-year custody battle over his six-year-old son, John. The custody battle triggered a chain of events which led to U.S. Representative Leo Ryan's investigation into the Temple's remote settlement of Jonestown in northern Guyana, which became internationally notorious in 1978 after 918 people – including Stoen's son – died in the settlement and on a nearby airstrip. Stoen continued to work as a deputy district attorney in Mendocino County, California, where he was assigned to the District Attorney's Fort Bragg office. Stoen later joined the Mendocino County Public Defenders. He is now in the private practice of law.
The Peoples Temple, the new religious movement which came to be known for the mass killings at Jonestown, was headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States from the early to mid-1970s until the Temple's move to Guyana in 1977. During this period, the Temple and its founder, Reverend Jim Jones, rose to national prominence thanks to Jones' interest in social and political causes, and wielded a significant amount of influence in San Francisco's city government.
"Drinking the Kool-Aid" is most strongly believing in and accepting a deadly, deranged, or foolish ideology or concept based only upon the overpowering coaxing of another; the expression is also used to refer to a person who wrongly has faith in a possibly doomed or dangerous idea because of perceived potential high rewards. The phrase typically carries a negative connotation. It can also be used ironically or humorously to refer to accepting an idea or changing a preference due to popularity, peer pressure, or persuasion. In recent years, it has evolved further to mean extreme dedication to a cause or purpose, so extreme that one would "drink the Kool-Aid" and die for the cause.
Carolyn Louise Moore Layton was a leadership figure within Peoples Temple and a long-term partner of Temple leader Jim Jones. Along with other inner circle members, she assisted in the planning of the mass murder that took place in Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978. She was the mother of a child by Jones, Jim Jon "Kimo" Prokes.
Archie Ijames was an American Christian minister and assistant pastor of Jim Jones' Peoples Temple.
References
- 1 2 3 Ameringer, Charles D. (1992). Political parties of the Americas, 1980s to 1990s: Canada, Latin America, and the West Indies. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 356. ISBN 978-0-313-27418-3.
- ↑ Abraham, Sara (2007). Labour and the multiracial project in the Caribbean: its history and its promise. Lexington Books. pp. 117–118. ISBN 978-0-7391-1686-9.
- ↑ Mars, Perry. Ideology and change : the transformation of the Caribbean left. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. p. 185
- ↑ Canterbury, Dennis C.. Neoliberal democratization and new authoritarianism. Aldershot: Ashgate, cop. 2005. p. 117
- 1 2 3 Reiterman, Tim; Jabobs, John (2008). Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Penguin Books. pp. 412–413. ISBN 978-1-58542-678-2.
