Jonestown, 1978

Jonestown, formally the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, was a remote agricultural settlement in Guyana built by the Peoples Temple, an American religious movement. On November 18, 1978, 918 people died across three connected locations: the settlement itself, the airstrip at nearby Port Kaituma, and a Temple-run building in Georgetown, Guyana's capital. In Jonestown, 909 people died, nearly all from cyanide poisoning; many were injected against their will, and roughly a third of those who died were minors, including infants who were reportedly among the first given the poison. Contemporary media accounts often described the Jonestown deaths as a mass suicide, while later assessments have used terms such as mass murder-suicide or massacre.

The Peoples Temple was founded in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1955 and described its ideology as apostolic socialism. Facing criticism in Indiana over its integrationist views, the group relocated to Redwood Valley, California, in 1965, later expanding to Los Angeles and San Francisco, where its leadership built close relationships with city and state officials. After further press criticism and the defection of eight Temple members in 1973, Temple leadership chose Guyana, an English-speaking, socialist-governed country, as a relocation site, citing the group's own socialist politics and concerns about racism and corporate influence in the United States. Temple leadership negotiated a lease of more than 3,800 acres of remote land in 1974; Guyana formally approved the lease in 1976, retroactive to April 1974, and Temple members built Jonestown roughly 150 miles west of Georgetown, on land with poor soil and no nearby water source.

After press investigations intensified in San Francisco, several hundred Temple members relocated to Jonestown in 1977, and the settlement's population grew toward nearly 900 by 1978. Members reportedly worked long hours in the fields under broadcast lectures and monitored media, and reported discipline measures included physical confinement and beatings; members who tried to escape were reportedly given sedatives, and armed guards patrolled the community. About 70% of residents were Black, and 45% were Black women. In 1978, U.S. embassy officials interviewed 75 Social Security recipients at Jonestown; none said they were held against their will, forced to sign over benefit checks, or wanted to leave.

Former Temple members and relatives, organizing as Concerned Relatives, lobbied U.S. and Guyanese officials starting in late 1977. In January 1978, a written complaint prompted ninety-one members of Congress, including Leo Ryan, to write to Guyana urging scrutiny of the Temple. On November 14, 1978, Ryan flew to Georgetown with a delegation of congressional staff, journalists, and relatives of Temple members to investigate conditions at Jonestown. During the delegation's overnight stay at Jonestown on November 17, two Temple members passed a note to a reporter asking for help leaving the settlement.

On November 18, 1978, as the delegation and a group of defecting Temple members prepared to depart from the Port Kaituma airstrip, Temple members, acting on the settlement leadership's instructions, opened fire on them. Ryan, NBC reporter Don Harris, NBC cameraman Bob Brown, Examiner photographer Greg Robinson, and Temple defector Patricia Parks were killed; several other members of the delegation were wounded. Hours later, Jonestown's leadership gathered the settlement over its loudspeaker system and directed members to drink a poison mixture prepared in a large tub, an event partly captured on an audio recording. Most of the 909 people who died in Jonestown that day were poisoned with cyanide, some injected against their will, while armed guards stood at the gathering. Separately, in Georgetown, four more Temple members died in a murder-suicide carried out on the settlement leadership's orders.