Summary
The people temple was a cult led by Jim Jones and would later be recognized with the Jonestown Massacre The Jonestown Massacre occurred on November 18th 1978 in Guyana. Jim Warren Jones sent down 900 to South America for an agriculture project. During the time down in Guyana they built schools, houses, first aid, and a pavilion for the people. After building, they started to settle on the land and grow crops to sustain themselves. When done building people started to enjoy their new life they had created until Jim Jones arrived at the compound and everything started to go downhill. Jim Jones was an unfit leader because of his drug abuse and always being under the influence of holding the peoples medical supplies in a 4,000 acres. As Jones was actively using the medical supplies for himself he started to become more paranoid. Jones paranoia became worse by the day he would beat and humiliate the members of his group and started testing their loyalty. Jones would perform a practice test of what would become real one day. In the practice test he lined the members up and gave them Kool-Aid to drink and told them they would all die within 45 minutes. After the 45 minutes were up he was pleased with his members for following his orders and told them that it was a test but they would be givin real poison one day and to drink it. After his loyalty test, families in the compound started to become concerned. Jones realized this peoples concerned and regulated communication with the outside world and when they would receive visitors they were told to be on their best behavior and to act happy. In one instance if they tried to leave with their visitors they would be shot, for example the 5 people who tried to leave with Congressman Leo Ryan. After Jones found out about this time came for what was a practice test to become real. it resulted in the largest number of American civilian casualties in one non-natural event. In this event 900 Americans that were members of a San Francisco religious group also known as the Peoples Temple commited mass suicide. In the grape flavored Kool-Aid cyanide, tranquilizers, and seductives were all used to kill these people. After Jones “Revolutionary suicide” he commited suicide himself but not by drinking the Kool-Aid but he was later found with a gunshot wound to the head.