The History of The People's Temple

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The Peoples Temple

During the mid 1950’s to early 1960’s, the African American Civil Rights Movement was in it’s prime time. Colored men and women were being discriminated and were being mistreated almost everywhere they went. By human nature, it would be ideal to fit in and be accepted for who you are, not for your color of skin. This was the perfect time for The Peoples Temple to come into play, starting off as a small church with a religious movement, the church gained a huge amount of followers from African Americans. Colored men and women felt comfortable joining this church with the main reason of equality. The Peoples Temple apparently offered equality and preached for socialism and that is what the followers of the movement were looking for. Behind every great movement is a strong and charismatic leader, The Peoples Temple was founded by Jim Jones who we now know was a very influential individual who abused the obedience and loyalty of his followers (Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple).
Jim Jones was born on May 13th, 1931, in the town Crete of Indiana but was raised in Lynn. Ever since his childhood days, people remembered him as a disturbed teen obsessed with the idea of death and religion. During his younger days, he captured animals and killed them in order to conduct a funeral for fun(Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple). Jones found this amusing and for some reason, nobody took this as an alarm that something might be
Lee 2 wrong with this individual. However, this was not the only alarming actions that was brought by Jones, in his teenage years, he showed that he was interested in the Pentecostalism movement and vandalized their established churches as well (Metcalf 336). Although ...

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... world that he possessed all the abilities that a great and charismatic leader should have but had a bad mindset causing the biggest mass suicide up to date.

Works Cited

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. Dir. Stanley Nelson. Firelight Media, 2006. Documentary.
Metcalf, Bill. “Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, The Peoples Temple, and Jonestown.” Rev. of Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, The Peoples Temple, and Jonestown, by David Chidester. Utopian Studies June 2005: 335-338. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 May 2014.
Moore, Rebecca. "The Peoples Temple." Virginia Commonwealth University College of Humanities and Sciences. N.p., 22 June 2012. Web. 04 May 2014.
Reiterman, Tim, and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People. New York: Dutton, 1982. Print.

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