page_title: Jim Jones
section_title: Focus on San Francisco
hierarchical_section_title: Jim Jones / Founding of the Peoples Temple / Focus on San Francisco
caption_attribution_description: English: Members of Peoples Temple including Richard Parr, Wesley Johnson, Barbara Hickson, Ricky Johnson and Sandra Cobb attend an anti-eviction rally at the International Hotel, 848 Kearny Street in San Francisco, January 1977. Photo by Nancy Wong
context_page_description: James Warren Jones was an American preacher, civil rights activist, and faith healer turned cult leader who conspired with his inner circle to direct a mass murder-suicide of his followers in his jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana. He launched the Peoples Temple in Indiana during the 1950s.
  Rev. Jones was ordained in 1957 by the Independent Assemblies of God and in 1964 by the Disciples of Christ. He moved his congregation to California in 1965 and gained notoriety with its activities in San Francisco in the 1970s. He then left the United States, bringing many members to a Guyana jungle commune called Jonestown.
  In 1978, media reports surfaced of human-rights abuses in the Peoples Temple in Jonestown. U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led a delegation to the commune to investigate. While boarding a return flight with some former cult members who had wished to leave, Ryan was assassinated and four others were murdered by gunfire. Jones then ordered and likely coerced a mass suicide and mass murder of 918 commune members, 304 of them children, almost all by cyanide-poisoned Flavor Aid.
context_section_description: Within five years of moving to California, the Temple experienced a period of exponential growth and opened branches in cities including San Fernando, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. By the early 1970s, Jones began shifting his focus to major cities because of limited expansion opportunities in Ukiah, California. He eventually moved the Temple's headquarters to San Francisco, which was a major center for radical protest movements, where both Jones and the Temple became influential in San Francisco politics, culminating in the Temple's instrumental role in George Moscone's mayoral victory in 1975. Moscone subsequently appointed Jones as the chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission.
  Jones was able to gain contact with prominent politicians at the local and national level. For example, he and Moscone met privately with vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale on his campaign plane days before the 1976 election, leading Mondale to publicly praise the Temple. First Lady Rosalynn Carter also met with Jones on multiple occasions, corresponded with him about Cuba, and spoke with him at the grand opening of the San Francisco headquarters—where he received louder applause than she did.
  
  In September 1976, California assemblyman Willie Brown served as master of ceremonies at a large testimonial dinner for Jones attended by Governor Jerry Brown and Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally. At that dinner, Brown touted Jones as "what you should see every day when you look in the mirror" and said he was a combination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Albert Einstein, and Mao Tse-tung. Harvey Milk spoke to audiences during political rallies held at the Temple, and he wrote to Jones after one such visit:
  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.
  Jones hosted local political figures at his San Francisco apartment for discussions, including Angela Davis. He spoke with publisher Carlton Goodlett of the San Francisco Sun-Reporter about his remorse over not being able to travel to socialist countries such as the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union, speculating that he could be Chief Dairyman of the U.S.S.R. His criticisms led to increased tensions with the Nation of Islam, so Jones spoke at a huge rally in the Los Angeles Convention Center that was attended by many of his closest political acquaintances, hoping to close the rift between the two groups.
  Jones also forged alliances with key columnists and others at the San Francisco Chronicle and other press outlets, although the move to San Francisco also brought increasing media scrutiny. Encountering resistance to publishing an exposé, Chronicle reporter Marshall Kilduff brought his story to New West magazine. In the summer of 1977, Jones and several hundred Temple members abruptly decided to move to the Temple's compound in Guyana after they learned the contents of Kilduff's article, which included allegations by former Temple members that they were physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. 
  Jones named the settlement "Jonestown" after himself.
caption: Peoples Temple members attend an anti-eviction rally at the International Hotel, San Francisco, in January 1977
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