page_title: Jim Jones
section_title: Pressure and waning political support
hierarchical_section_title: Jim Jones / Formation and operation of Jonestown / Pressure and waning political support
caption_attribution_description: English: Reverend Jim Jones of People's Temple (r) with Reverend Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Church in front of the International Hotel on Kearny and Jackson Streets in San Francisco at a protest to prevent eviction of the hotel's tenants.
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: In the autumn of 1977, Tim Stoen and others who had left the Temple formed a "Concerned Relatives" group because they had family members in Jonestown. Stoen traveled to Washington, D.C. in January 1978 to visit with State Department officials and members of Congress, and he wrote a white paper detailing his grievances against Jones and the Temple. His efforts aroused the curiosity of California Congressman Leo Ryan, who wrote a letter on Stoen's behalf to Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham. The Concerned Relatives also began a legal battle with the Temple over the custody of Stoen's son, John.
  Most of Jones's political allies broke ties after his departure, though some did not. Willie Brown spoke out against enemies at a rally that was attended by Harvey Milk and Assemblyman Art Agnos. On February 19, 1978, Milk wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter defending Jones as "a man of the highest character," and he claimed that escaped Temple members were trying to "damage Rev. Jones's reputation" with "apparent bold-faced lies." Moscone's office issued a press release saying Jones had broken no laws.
  On April 11, 1978, the Concerned Relatives distributed a packet of documents, letters, and affidavits to the Peoples Temple, members of the press, and members of Congress which they titled an "Accusation of Human Rights Violations by Rev. James Warren Jones." In June 1978, escaped Temple member Deborah Layton provided the group with a further affidavit detailing crimes by the Temple and substandard living conditions in Jonestown.
  Jones was facing increasing scrutiny in the summer of 1978 when he hired JFK assassination conspiracy theorists Mark Lane and Donald Freed to help make the case of a "grand conspiracy" against the Temple by U.S. intelligence agencies. Jones told Lane that he wanted to "pull an Eldridge Cleaver," referring to a fugitive member of the Black Panthers who was able to return to the U.S. after repairing his reputation.
caption: Rev. Cecil Williams and Jones protest evictions at the International Hotel in San Francisco, January 1977
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