The Genocide Of Jonestown: The Genocide Of Jonestown

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The Genocide of Jonestown What if you were forced to kill yourself by the person that said they would put the puzzle pieces of your life back in the right spot and give it meaning? Jim Warren Jones was born May 13, 1931 in Crete, Indiana. As a child Jim Jones was considered the underdog of town even though he would fight off kids who bully other children, he would save stray pets and he would even take beggars to his own home. When Jim graduated he had a big interest in medicine and that was the start of it all. Jim Jones began to get his career on the move, Jim and Marceline adopted many children but they did have one child of their own. Marceline and Jim had a really difficult marriage but stayed together as well as they could until the end. More and more Jim Jones wanted the world to be a better place so he tried out being a student pastor in a church that had already taken off, this didn’t work out because Jim didn’t believe in segregation and all of the others in the church did. Jim wanted most of his preaching to be to African Americans. To bring in new people Jim used “healing” rituals, he stood in front of them to preach about how he could heal them from eye problems all the way to heart disease. Jim Jones could finally start his own church with all of the followers he had gained in 2 years. The first church was opened in Indianapolis in 1956 which he called the “peoples temple”. Jim thought that there was a bad balance in the world that the rich were way to rich and the poor were working way too hard for the little that they got. So the people’s temple helped get homes for the mentally ill and the elderly and also helped people find jobs. The temple grew larger and larger as the days went by, in 1966 Jim Jones decided ... ... middle of paper ... ... on them. Congressman Ryan died and many of the others that tried to leave were injured in the act. Jim Jones influenced all of these followers to do “revolutionary suicide”, many of Jim Jones followers died from drinking the cyanide-laced grape punch that he had given them. Jim also died on (November 18, 1978) of a gun wound straight to his head. Yet no one knows if the gunshot wound was self-inflicted. What happened in Jonestown was a sad devastation to many people, and it can even be considered genocide because of all the people he made commit suicide to be with each other in the end. A total of 900 people died from drinking the cyanide-laced grape punch. Once you kill someone it cannot be undone and that does not change once you kill more either it just makes it worse with the 900 that were killed in Jonestown. That makes Jim Jones a dictator to this genocide.

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