Jim Warren Jones was born in Randolph County, Indiana. His father James Jones was a World War I veteran, and his mother Lynetta Putnam. She had believed she had given birth to a messiah. When Jones was a child, during the depression, he and his parents moved into a small shack without plumbing, due to poverty.
When Jones was a child he read a lot, because he did not have the money, or the friends for entertainment, so he studied Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, and Adolf Hitler. While studying the powerful communists, he noted their strengths and weaknesses.
Jones had also become interested in religion; it was a way for him to feel happy, since he did not have many friends. Jim was referred to as being a “weird kid” who was obsessed with religion, and death. It was stated that he would hold funerals for small animals on his property, and he had stabbed a cat to death.
Jim started to develop his own views as he grew older, while his father was an alcoholic in the Ku Klux Klan, Jim was sympathizing with the African-American community, probably because he was such an outcast as a child, and he knew how it felt to be excluded. One day Jim brought home a friend, who was an African American, but his father refused to let him into the house, and they fought over the issue of race. After this incident, Jim did not talk to his father for many years, and his parents eventually separated, and he moved with his mother to Richmond, Indiana, graduating from Richmond High School.
After high school, Jim moved to Bloomington, and he attended Indiana University – Bloomington, where he saw Eleanor Roosevelt give a speech about African-Americans. Jones married his wife, Marceline in 1949 during his first year of college.
When Jones an...
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...sed his “power” for civil rights instead of Communism. He could have been right next to MLK in history, he had a decent sized following, and he could have done some really good things, but instead of seeing him as an influential person, we see him as a selfish and controlling deviant.
Works Cited
"Jim Jones," The Biography Channel website; 2014 [cited 2014 Apr 01] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/jim-jones-10367607.
History.com Staff. "Jonestown - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com." History. A+E Networks, 2010. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Crawford-Mason, Clare, Dolly Langdon, Melba Beals, Nancy Faber, and Diana Waggoner. "The Legacy of Jonestown: a Year of Nightmares and Unanswered Questions." People Magazine 12 Nov. 1979: 36+. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Steel, Fiona. "Jonestown Massacre: A 'Reason' to Die." Crime Library. Ed. Andy Brooks. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
...upport of black nationalism and communism towards the end of his life. He is recognized as one of the most influential African American scholars of the 20th century paving the way for advocates of civil rights.
On July 25, 1946, two young black couples- Roger and Dorothy Malcom, George and Mae Murray Dorsey-were killed by a lynch mob at the Moore's Ford Bridge over the Appalachee River connecting Walton and Oconee Counties (Brooks, 1). The four victims were tied up and shot hundreds of times in broad daylight by a mob of unmasked men; murder weapons included rifles, shotguns, pistols, and a machine gun. "Shooting a black person was like shooting a deer," George Dorsey's nephew, George Washington Dorsey said (Suggs C1). It has been over fifty years and this case is still unsolved by police investigators. It is known that there were atleast a dozen men involved in these killings. Included in the four that were known by name was Loy Harrison. Loy Harrison may not have been an obvious suspect to the investigators, but Harrison was the sole perpetrator in the unsolved Moore's Ford Lynching case. The motive appeared to be hatred and the crime hurt the image of the state leaving the town in an outrage due to the injustice that left the victims in unmarked graves (Jordon,31).
The book A ,Misplaced Massacre, Ari Kelman’s writing describes the Sandy Creek Massacre astounding while still explaining how historians struggled to get its story to public and be told. This epic event in the history of America’s settlement occurred on . The sandy river Massacre was once seen a horrific event. The tittle has even been debated over the years.
Jim Jones was the notorious cult leader of the Peoples Temple. Jones was born on May 13, 1931 in Crete, Indiana. He was a self-appointed pastor from a church in the Midwest. Jim had been popular for always wearing dark glasses, black suits and slicked-back hair, which made a splendid impression on the pulpit of the churches he had preached at or had been to. He then, in the mid-1960s, moved his congregation to California to, what he had wished, avoid the start of a nuclear war. Then, in 1974, he moved his people to Guyana after he was faced with financial abuses, criticism, and church beatings.
For many years, cult leaders always had a psychological hold on their followers' minds. Whether it was to kill other people or to kill themselves, they did it without question. Some cult leaders used fear, violence and guilt as a means of a weapon to control the minds of their followers. Other cult leaders used persuasive and spiritual speeches that made their followers believe they were doing good and fulfilling God's plan. Because cult leaders are powerful through psychological offenses, the people that belong to their cults are brainwashed into doing things they wouldn't normally do in their right state of mind.
Jim Jones was “a self-proclaimed messiah in a polyester suit, a man who played God from behind mysterious dark glasses that gave his followers the impression that he was omniscient”( Axthelm 54). Born in 1931 in Lynn, Indiana to James Thurmond and Lynetta Jones, he was looked upon by his parents as a gift from Saint Francis. Jim’s father was white and an active member of the Ku Klux Klan. His mother was part Cherokee which lead Jim in later years to refer to himself with pride as an “ All-American mongrel”
Jim was known as the town’s practical joker, even though his jokes were cruel and disrespectful. In one of whitey’s stories about Jim, he mentions how Jim once said “that lots of people had tried to make a monkey out of him, but he always got even.” which explains some of Jim’s reactions to some things. For example when his wife went to one of Jim’s jobs and asks for his wages, Jim later finds out ...
Abrams, Rochonne. "The Colonial Childhood of Meriwether Lewis." Abrams, Rochonne. The Colonial Childhood of Meriwether Lewis. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1978. 218-327.
Brooks, Rebecca B. "The Boston Massacre." History of Massachusetts. N.p., 10 Nov. 2011. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
This is clear proof that those around him had influenced his behavior and actions. Gone was the weak, sentimental boy, afraid to leave home. Jim Hawkins transformed into a ruthless pirate, willing to fight and kill to discover the sought after treasure. Hawkins even admits to Long John Silver that he killed his men, saying “as for the schooner, it was I who cut her cable, and it was I that killed the men you had aboard her.” (Stevenson
This chapter provided information from the trial of Captain Thomas Preston. The chapter asked the question, “What really happened in the Boston Massacre”. Chapter four focused on the overall event of the Massacre and trying to determine if Captain Preston had given the order to fire at Boston citizens. The chapter provides background information and evidence from Preston’s trial to leave the reader answering the question the chapter presents. Although, after looking through all the witnesses’ testimonies some might sway in Captain Preston’s favor, just the way the grand jury did.
The first one would be when Jim Jones made it known after he moved to San Francisco that he was interested in politics, and legal changes strengthened political groups like the temple. In 1975 when George Moscone won the election and appointed Jones as Chairman of San Francisco Housing Authority Commission. The negative impact was when Congressman Leo Ryan and a group of journalist visited People’s temple in Jonestown,Guyana During the Congressman's visit several members of the group wanted to leave with the congressman and on the afternoon of november 18 when they accompanied Congressman Ryan to the local airstrip to leave they were intercepted by a group of temple security guard who opened fire on the group killing Congressman Ryan ,three journalist and one temple defectors a few seconds of gunfire was captured on video by Bob Brown one of the journalist that was killed in the
During his school years, he was often sent home because of inappropriate clothing. To solve this problem he would often steal in order to look good enough to attend school. By the time James reached 16 years old, he was arrested, and served 3 years in prison. While in prison he started a gospel group an earned the title “Music Box” (Brenchley, 2003, DVD).
Furthermore, the film is highly inclusive, giving the viewer thorough detail not only about the religious organization, but also Jones himself. To start off, the film gives detail of Jones’ upbringing, how he behaved as a child, and certain psychological traits that could potentially explain why the incident happened. For instance, it was stated within the film that Jones grew up in a very poor family. His father, James Jones was an alcoholic, leaving his mother to provide for the family alone. As a result of his dysfunctional home-life, Jones grew to be
Jim Jones planned the sequence of events in killing hundreds of people and unfortunately, his plan worked. Since many people died on that day, the Jonestown Massacre is considered a very important part of history, and also one that people, today, remember the tragic loss of their loved ones.