He moved the Temple to northern California, near Ukiah in 1965. His increasing fears and paranoia took him home to Indiana with a determination to make money and a newly found gift of extreme exaggeration. He visited Guyana in 1963, where his first vision of a remote utopian settlement was formed. He tried his brand of evangelizing but did not meet with the success he had attained in the U.S. Stating his belief that a nuclear holocaust was coming, he moved his family to what he considered a safe spot in April 1962, a Brazilian city 250 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. Soon he was disparaging traditional biblical tenets, demanding that his religious philosophies be followed instead. He was also beginning to demand fierce personal loyalty from his followers and flexing his capitalist muscle by setting up several corporations, which profited under religious nonprofit protection. Soon he was noticed for his power to relate to people and for building their self-esteem. In 1961, Mayor Boswell appointed Jones as director of the Indianapolis' Human Rights Commission. His mother's dream seemed to be self-fulfilling. The Temple formed a soup kitchen, an employment desk to help people find jobs, and a nursing home. Disenchanted with the Methodist faith, he created his own church, the Community National Church.īy 1956, he opened the first Peoples Temple in Indianapolis. He worked part-time as a hospital orderly, also becoming pastor of a Methodist church in Indianapolis, Indiana where his strong views on integration made him a target of bigots. His high-school classmates recall that he was popular but not a leader, noticing his growing interest in religion.Īfter graduating from Richmond High School, near Lynn, Indiana, Jones had ten years of on-and-off studies before receiving his BA degree from Butler University. At seven, a neighbor recalled he would lace his speeches with calls for strict discipline. Jim was raised a Methodist and played pretend-church as a child. His mother worked in a factory and kept the vision of her dream. His father, James Thurmond Jones, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and died when Jim was young. She was convinced that her child was a messiah.

A dream of her dead mother telling her she would bear a son who would right the wrongs of the world helped make her decision. Jones' mother, Lynetta Jones, was a young anthropologist trying to decide between her career or marriage. However, he held an incredible power of persuasion and led nearly 1000 people, including himself, to a mass suicide on 19 November 1978, Georgetown, Guyana. Jones was known as a manic-depressive who suffered from paranoia and delusions.

In 1977, he led his followers from San Francisco to Guyana. Photo: Nancy Wong, license cc-by-sa-4.0 BiographyĪmerican cult figure, the Leader of The People's Temple.

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