The Jonestown Tragedy

Jonestown was supposed to be a paradise and a perfect miniature society for Reverend Jim Jones and his loyal followers, but after only one year of a working civilization, horror would strike, ending the lives of nearly one thousand of Jones’s hopeful followers. Jonestown was an independent society located deep in the jungles of Guyana in South America. This perfected society was created for people who did not like how the United States was governed. The Jonestown tragedy has been compared to Adolf Hitler’s inhumane Holocaust and even the gruesome massacres of Charles Manson because all three of these catastrophes were due to one person’s need for dominance.

Jim Jones opened his first People’s Temple in Indianapolis, and then Jones later moved

After a few years, a group of over one thousand people, including Jones, finally moved into Jonestown with high hopes of the utopia and the seemingly great leader. Although citizens were forced to do hard labor for long hours every day, they did not mind sharing the work load equally. There were harsh punishments issued if Jones’s authority was questioned. Eventually Jones took everyone’s passports, making it challenging for anyone to leave. He also ordered a handful of trusted men to patrol the compounds, armed with guns, to keep citizens inside. There were also “White Night” drills. During these drills a loud siren sounded in the middle of the night, waking all of the people. The drills were enacted in case an enemy came near and was about to

Everyone had to take the poison either by free will, or if they refused, the poison was injected with a needle. Children were forced to drink it first with adults telling them that it was just kool aid. Jim Jones was shot in the head, but it is not known for a fact if he killed himself or if someone else pulled the trigger. There only survivor in Jonestown at the time of the mass genocide was Catherine Hyacinth Edwards Thrash. She hid under her bed until the town was completely silent. A total of nine hundred and thirteen people died in the horrific Jonestown