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The People's Temple Massacre: The Jonestown Massacre

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Introduction
Silence. It was quiet and still in Jonestown when the People’s Temple died. Bodies laid everywhere after one man gave the order to give up. Jim Jones was their leader. Jim Jones forced the members to obey him, no matter if they didn’t want any part of what he wanted them to do. Then he made sure no one could make him pay for his crimes. The Jonestown incident was a mass suicide lead by Jim Jones which scared survivors and obliterated families.
The People’s Temple
Early life of Jim Jones Jim Jones’s early life was a hint of what he would he would become. On May 13, 1931 in Crete, Indiana Jim Warren Jones was born. During his childhood Jim Jones pretended to be a priest and held many funerals for dead pets for his friends. After …show more content…

Jim Jones was caught up in the Pentecostalism religion and based the People’s Temple off of it (Kellaher, 2000). Jim Jones got people to agree to give up everything they owned and follow his vision of a utopian society where there was no discrimination of any kind (Jim Jones, 2005). People also assimilated after Jim Jones healed them from illnesses, but in reality Jim Jones was not curing them at all (Moran, 1999). Jim Jones had a vision of a nuclear war during this part of his life and then moved his church and members to California (Jim Jones, …show more content…

Cyanide, sedatives, and some kind of soft drink were mixed together after Jim Jones brought everyone together and told them it was time for “White Night.” The children were given the poison first and their parents watched as they died. Then the parents took the poison, and the people who did not take it were injected or had it forced down their throats (Moran, 1999). Even the ones who did not swallow the poison would die because it could be absorbed in the mouth (Layton, 1998). In the end, nine hundred people died on November 18, 1978 including Jim Jones (Kellaher, 2000). Jim Jones was also killed that day from a bullet that hit him in the head and no one knows if it was suicide or a stray bullet (Jim Jones,

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