Transcripts For CSPAN3 Jim Jones And Jonestown 20151130

This is a special part of the one city, one book extravaganza. Thank you for being so wonderful to work with and allowing us to present this incredible panel today. I want to give a special thanks and remembrance to jim jones, junior, who was hopeful to be with us today. He sends you and the panelists all his best, but he was unable to participate to health reasons. We will send out some good love to jim. The California Historical society is deeply honored to hold the peoples temple collection. The California Historical society was chosen as the repository in 1983. We have worked tirelessly with many survivors and many historians and students whatonate to learn happened over the intervening years. We are proud to be the largest repository of archival materials relating to the peoples temple and jonestown, whether it be the digitization of separate films were over 50 different collections contained within the peoples temple broader collection, we are honored to steward it. We invite you all into research it. All of ourly honored panelists have taken advantage of this collection. This is the work that you help us do, preserving, whether they be f. B. I. Files, photographs of those lost in jonestown. Your support enables our work. We are also honored to invite you after the program back to our library over my right hand shoulder. It is the Research Library many of you have used. It is the portal to our remarkable collections. Jamie henderson has lovingly laid out a number of pieces from the collection, including a number of letters david used to write his book. If you have not seen or touched that part of history, come back afterwards and hold history in your hands. It is even more powerful. Im honored to be here today and moderate the panel. Im going to introduce my wonderful colleagues up here and get the conversation going. Have them talk among themselves and then take questions from all of you. We are deeply honored that cspan2 is here. We are under lights which means we cannot see you well. You are beautiful because your moke to the mesh mostly backlit. To moderate and have questions flow, you will have found little pencils and blank cards. If you have questions, please feel free to jot one down. Raise your hand discreetly and one of my great team will collect them and i will ask them. What i have found is that some of the questions start to lay atop each other so we can answer a lot of questions in good time. Introduce to your right and my left, starting with john cobb. John is one of the few surviving members of the peoples temple. He was born into the temple. This value was part of the first pioneering members who moved out from indianapolis to Redwood Valley in california. They were there for the beginnings of reverend jones attempts at truly establishing a church. He was a member until the groups tragic end in 1978. He was in georgetown with the Basketball Team at that time. Tragically lost 10 members of his family in jonestown. He is currently writing a book about his story. We are all wishing him well. The completion date says 2016, and so it shall be. Right, wet and youre are thrilled to welcome marshall kilduff. He walked over from the chronicle building on fifth and mission. He has a long career of writing mostly for the chronicle but especially a very powerful piece that was not accepted by the chronicle in 1978. He has given voice to politics , government or lack there of, development, city affairs. And has been one of the lionsable true lanes of the San Francisco chronicle. He matriculated from the lovely campus on the old farm in palo alto. And joins us today to add a great depth of narrative. He coauthored suicide cult, history of peoples temple and jim jones. Next marshall is david talbot, the man who wrote season of the witch. There could seem to be no more as the choice generations fade who actively remember living here and being here in november of 1978. Season of the witch was published in 2012 and has a deep resonance with us still and is being read widely this week. Journalist american we are honored to call our own in california, a trailblazer and entrepreneur. He was the founder and and editorinchief of one of the worlds first web magazines, salon. Com. You might have heard about it he figured out the web long before anybody else, to his esteemed credit. Are you wearing your glasses . Look at you. I have sensitive eyes. Forgive me. When we talk later, i will take my glasses off. He has lovely eyes. Into an entireea way to consume knowledge with salon. Com. After leaving salon, he increased his reputation as a n historian. We are welcoming him into the tribal unit. He just finished a book on the kennedy brothers. Which i cannot wait to read. He has also worked as an editor for mother jones and rights for time, new yorker, rolling stone, and many other publications. Terms ofnot least in big heart, personality, and so ul is eugene smith. He had just turned 21 years old prior to november 1978. Im going to read his words because they are so beautiful. Forge thatwith the sealed me and dictated my immediate future at that time. My only responsibility was to survive. There was no place to hide or disappear. Eugene lost his mother, his wife and his infant son that day. , he has spent the rest of his life dedicated to remembering and persevering. His responsibility was to survive and bring us knowledge from the depths of his heart and memory. He turned to writing. Weinteresting part of what will talk about today is how you begin to write about this weather from memory or historic perspective. His recent articles include one for the jonestown report. He is at work on a book. I think 2016 is going to be a big year. It will be. It shall be. You have heard it here at the California Historical society. Please join me in welcoming my incredible panel. [applause] im going to ask david to provide a brief historical context. Share with us the time, as you so beautifully show us, starting after the summer of love and the rise of the counterculture. That helps us understand the rise of peoples temple and the of reverend jones. My new book is the devils chessboard, the dark history of the c. I. A. Is there any other . Temple,ext for peoples you have to look at some of what is going on in the city already. The social disruption, the re out theent that tou heart of black San Francisco. That was the seed in the garden establish histo political roots in this town and begin to have wide influence over the liberal leadership of San Francisco. I dont think he could have done that if the fillmore had not been hollowed out by the San Francisco redevelopment agency. It tore out the heart and soul of what was once known as the harlem of the west. A vibrant middle class black community. Nightclubs, stores, houses, and so on. My own son, joe talbot, is making a movie to continue that legacy. It looks at the legacy of that, the last black man in San Francisco. A this day, you have declining African American population it feels sidelined and robbed of its portable power. That definitely was the feeling at the time when jim jones came here from Redwood Valley, he was moving into a political vacuum. There were some African American churches. But he became such a powerful force because he was a master of manipulating people. He was a master of finding out what politicians weaknesses were. What his turn ons were at exploiting them. Of course, he delivered bodies and votes. Vote early, vote often. We can talk about the election of 1975 as a key turning point, which georgeace in moscone narrowly won election, do to voter fraud. San francisco has to analyze what it did to the african theican community, allowed negro removal as James Baldwin called it later, to happen. It was into that vacuum that jim jones moved. Thank you so much, david. I am often reminded of that wonderful James Baldwin quote that American History is more beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever written about it. Horse ofontext of the firstrenewal, targeting the japaneseamerican communities which just had come back from being incarcerated at camp and then simultaneously the African American communities as well, many of whom had moved in during the war ironically to places held by the japaneseamerican community. Incredible cycle of displacement. A man with incredible charisma, charm, and power comes in. I like to ask john and eugene to share some firsthand experiences with the church in helping us better understand from their perspectives. John first. John my experience is unique in that there are probably two or three other people that were born into peoples temple still living. That is what i knew from day one. Most of the things i have read of the things we hear and talk about have been factual things. What happened on this date or that date. What has been missed was the daytoday occurrence of peoples functionedd how it in peoples temple. Not jim jones. There were several people that made that temple function. It would have functioned perfectly without jim jones, even better. Toward the end, he was incapable of doing anything. Of what a whole story happened day today in jonestown. How people lived, what drove people there. There is a sense that people were like mindless people following a cult. It was not that way at all. Many people i know still alive today are very successful and did not have a problem integrating back into society because we were not that much different at all. One of the things it offered, several things it offered, a lot of people say was involved politically. That was a big driving force for it. I look at the same things happening today. The things that people are looking for today, education, health care, housing, being able to put food on the table. Once you became a member of peoples temple, you did not have to worry about that anymore. Of course, everyone wanted to make the world a better place. But those basic needs were provided for you, at some cost, yes. I have talked to a person that i knew whose family was part of peoples temple for probably 20 years. She has a few kids and grandkids now. I saw her a couple of years back. She said i wish there was Something Like peoples temple now. Kids today need that structure and purpose. Granted, there were a lot of terrible things that happened. But the reason why people were there and what they did, the functionality, how they lived, has been missed. Part of the thing that has driven me to write is that the people who are no longer with us, their story has never been told. They died and were labeled as casualties of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why were you there . Of course, some of the people didnt want to be there. Had they had the choice to leave, they would have. But there was so much more that was missed to that whole story. That is not been told. The negative and the craziness of jim jones has been repeated endlessly. I feel where we are in our culture in time, people are ready to hear what else happened there other than the facts and the end of it. That is what has driven me to write. That is where i am at with it. Like i said, i was born there. I have a different understanding of it. I saw it for what it really was behind the scenes. A lot of people saw jim jones as rophet, healer, god. I never did. A lot of things he perpetrated he could do i knew from day one he could not. My mother wanted a better life for her kids. Removed from indianapolis against my fathers will. He eventually followed us. There were other reasons for it. That is my story i am doing a good job of telling. I think it will be interesting. It will be a lot different from what is out there so far. I would love to come back to some of those stories about the in to Day Community formed the 70s when we hoped and believed we were all created equal. Thank you, sir. Eugene . Eugene i came into the temple when i was 15. The summer of ninthgrade, coming in. I had always been politically inclined because my mother was. In addition to that, she was always searching for that religion. In detroit, we were part of Aretha Franklins fathers church. We had been catholic, we had been baptists, we had been nondenominational. Every six months, it was a new religion. I basically revolted around 12 or 13 and i said im done with it. She had heard about jim jones. I went to hear him speak at irwin junior high in fresno. I thought it was interesting. The sunglasses threw me off. I didnt really come back until i was 18. Then i moved directly into a commune in San Francisco. I stayed behind stage initially. For me the temple was a candy , store in the sense that there were no limits on what i could do. There were no limits to who i could come in contact with. There was no end to my learning. In seventh grade, i was already reading at a 12th grade level. Coming into the peoples temple at 18 having a printing press, a woodshop, a construction crew to get you in the community to meet all these different people, it all seemed normal. What made it seemed so normal is brown at aee willie meeting or jane fonda. We are not all being fooled. Something about this has to be real. So you assumed. What happens after time is that jim jones became background noise. What you felt responsible for were the other people there. They were your family. You felt responsible towards them. A lot of people stay because they did not want to leave their family there alone. They didnt want them to be abused or possibly hurt or interrogated because you left. Some people stayed out of guilt, some people stayed out of responsibility. Some stayed out of love for other human beings to protect them and be at their call, so to speak. We never called old people, old people. We called them seniors. They were the repository of knowledge. When they spoke, you are expected to listen. If they needed assistance, you are expected to assist. They passed on their knowledge to us. We passed on our knowledge to the younger ones. Jonestown was a little bit different. Getting there was an adventure. Being there was an adventure. A lot of times, you were working on adrenaline. Even when you did know it was real, there was a certain urgency to it because you were being awakened out of a dead sleep and running to the pavilion to see what was happening. Were we under attack . Were they going to take the children . Were they going to bomb us off the map as if this never happened . Even if you knew that, there was a certain fright. My first night coming to jonestown, we are going through potholes which were huge because of the red clay. It could not see the jungle was so black. You only see what was in front of you. You could hear the pavilion miles away. People yelling and screaming. It was close to venezuela. That is why we were there. It was a disputed area between venezuela and guyana. Having a religious community with an Agricultural Mission justified guyana seizing that property. Jumping off the trailer and going to the brazilian, seeing people you had not seen for years or thought had left but have not, seeing my wife who was just weeks away from delivering. I had not seen her in four months. I had not seen my mother in over two years. Friends i had not seen longer than that in some cases. Getting there and acclimating was easy. Staying there acclimating was very difficult. That is it. Thank you. Marshall, you started work in probably about 1976. Intensively it seems in january of 1977, working as a reporter for the chronicle investigating the peoples temple church. Wanting to write about it for the chronicle but not accepted. David details that closely in terms of how close the chronicle editorial leadership was to jim jones. Was it 1978 . 1977, publishing his piece. Marshall if you are trying to get me fired, you are doing a very good job. Let me try to strike a quick note of contrast between these idealism driven accounts of the life in the church and the way it would look to a reporter was nothing like that. This church was hostile, very enclosed, didnt want to deal with the world except on its own strict structured terms. It went everywhere on its own. It beingd mentions flattened by redevelopment, that was part of the problem. But the church came in as a total unit. They did some recruiting. But they were by and large themselves, on buses, from Redwood Valley. It was not a totally homegrown or open organization. It was especially true if you were a reporter asking questions. Can i look your temple . Can i meet your people . It would be very difficult to be a casual joiner, inquirer, or historian. It was very circumscribed and founded world they lived in. Boss. Ronicle flattered my a new guy on the job would want to know that and be accepted. He went over and he was. When i went to the church, they sat me in the front row right next to my boss. It was very clear the temple was in charge of the deal and dont worry about it. That was not so much my problem as the aspects of the church that were the troubling part of the story that i am sure will be in the books they are writing. That was your life was really not your own in many ways that broke up families. Your money got turned over. If you are a woman, you are at a special disadvantage, to put it delicately. There was a lot of faith healing to win over folks. It was not always as idealistic and fordseeking forwardseeking as many of the ideals you would want to have. As this came out the church ran , away. They went to guyana because their time was up in San Francisco. Politicians saw what they wanted. They took what they wanted. When the whole thing fell apart, it was like, i did not know. You cant blame me. It is a whole other side of the story. This absentmindedness, absence of history forgetfulness and , choosing what you want to remember to me is one of the worst parts about this experience. There is no memorial in San Francisco to this thing. When the bodies were brought back, those that were not claimed are now in a corner of an oakland cemetery. Just pulled away from the story. Politicos are still hard at it. I doubt they want to talk about this. There are a lot of names that gone through this story that have not accounted for it, to put it politely. The story continues to have fingers into the present. As david said also, San Francisco is in a lot of tumult right now. The dollar signs are bigger. But could Something Like this happen again . Could somebody show up with an answer . Claims of future good things. Could people be accepted on solely a critical look . As a wiseguy journalist, thats kind of what i look for in the story and what i find. The peoples temple itself, it is now u. S. Post office. The only congressman ever killed in the line of duty was leo ryan and jonestown. Now the federal government owns that in a sense his back guy killers came from. This stuff is still buzzing around in many different forms. That is my story. You have a lot more stories than that, but thank you all for that description. I know you are mean with thoughts and ideas. We will continue our conversation up here a little bit more and then take questions. I am struck by this remarkable confluence of issues like slavery and poverty coming out of the powerful, tumultuous time first with world war i then world war ii, and the dramatic change in democracy from about 1948 to 1978. Two years in california time is about 20 years somewhere else. Everything seems to happen so fast. The social changes that all of you lived through. Many of these things are manifest here on the tip of his peninsula. David writes very well on why someone like harvey milk or george moscone. Coming from a very progressive transition, or fighting tooth and nail not only as a gay man but for role in government of the city, that all of this took place at the same time culminating in an opening for someone like jones to move in. What i am loving up the conversation so far. Is about the yearning for community from dislocated people whose lives were continuously ripped apart to by what yous struck said, it was a candy store. All the things you would want as a kid. A library, health care, food. Meeting those basic needs. Wouldnt it be nice if kids growing up today in the mission or really anywhere in the bay area didnt have to worry about that every day, every minute of every day . How the peoples temple encompasses all of those stories, the very personal and also very political. This is of a heart of what we are trying to present to people today. John, i like to come back to you in terms of the missing stories. And wanting to reclaim some of that past. They made their own community those spaces, whether it was up in the redwoods or down and down in guyana. When you talk a little bit more about some of those stories and what you remember . Pick from thousands. John i will give you an example of for instance a week in Redwood Valley. I was probably 13 or 14 years old. What you have to understand is i , saw jim jones, i didnt see him as a father. I just saw him as a man. Two of my sons married to his daughters. I saw him behind the scenes a lot of the time, so i wasnt apprehensive about him. I talked to him on a daily basis. I was acclimated to it to where it was my lifestyle. A good friend of mine lives in atlanta. He grew up watching us. He joined the temple when he was 12 years old. He was a foster kid who came to Redwood Valley. A lot of people thought you guys were treated special. You guys were held in such a high regard. Monday morning started off very sleepy. Go to school, do our regular thing as a student. We had practices after school. After that on monday, come back home do more work and probably , hang out with jimmy. Play a little more ball. Tuesdays, same thing. Go to the church. With teacherses who were members there. We were very well educated. On wednesday night we had meetings. They lasted until late, whenever. Get up, back to school. Same thing on thursday. Tutoring at school. Friday we would play games. School, home part. Ourt after the games , parents made sure we had that experience. Suitcases were packed, get on the bus in Redwood Valley and come to San Francisco. Have a meeting friday night in San Francisco. After the meeting friday night in San Francisco get back on the , bus go to los angeles. Morning, weturday all get off the bus play some , basketball. Get something to eat. Services all night saturday. Get back on that bus and get back to Redwood Valley. About 3 00 in the morning on monday morning. Rush off to school and everybody goes to work. That was our life. That is all i knew. It was normal to me. Surprisingly it served me well as i got older. Three disciplined but was also fun. You would not being beaten to do it. You doing it with hundreds of people your own age. They were your friends. It was fun to go to San Francisco and los angeles. It was fun to see all these places. It kept us oute, of trouble. We saw a different lifestyle. People thought we were being programmed and be down at the same time. Had his indoctrination, he had his meetings or whatnot. I am sure a lot of people were believing that an listening to it, but we were not there for that reason. We will there for a purpose for our families. Trying to make a better world. Trying to have other people see the way we lived. We didnt see color. We treated other people that way. We had friends outside the peoples temple. Im good friends with several people now. They were never members. Until i got older, i didnt see what the other people were experiencing. All these other negatives are documented in many of these books. Im not trying to retell the story. Im trying to tell a whole different story about what life was like in the temple. Peoples temple was one of many communal experiments. Cesar chavez had his own commune. Many historians listening to the last tapes of his it was , increasingly insular. Increasingly paranoid. Increasingly driven. It was frightening for so many who went through a lot of the social Justice Movements in the 60s wound up in this fortress. Many people saw in increasingly many movements, and california has an amazing history of communal and social experiments. John you were not privy to a lot of things unless you a member, but once you became a member they would open up to you. I had friends who would come and visit on sunday. But you brought them in . You are welcome to come. I would see them come in, but i would not hang out with them. It was not like you had to be a member to get in. If you just wanted to walk in off the street and come to a service, you could do it. You are welcome to come in. Does that answer your question . That is very helpful. David when you hear about other religious groups and movements, causes that strike people in an exciting new way do you ever , wince . Does it seem not lesson that you need to learn to talk about . My concern is that so much of this is repeatable. By talking about it and writing about it, does that give people more awareness of their world. John i dont know that it does. When people have their minds made up, they are going to believe it. David so much for journalism. John you will have to grab and find things out for themselves. I would so that i would say that any group that takes your rights away, that you cannot do , flags should go up right there. If you dont have a right to go to a traditional type group, once they start laying down all these rules, that is no longer a church. When they take your rights away, that crosses the line. Eugene it is complicated because the temple had a lot of facets. John was still in school. I had just graduated from high school when i moved to San Francisco. My day was a lot different. My day started at 5 a. M. By 6 00 a. M. I was already in the back parking lot. I was on a construction crew, in fact i was in charge of the construction crew. In San Francisco we would be , building crates to send equipment over to guyana. If you can imagine the materials for 1000 people, it was phenomenal. It took years. When i was on construction los angeles it was completely different. We would be on the job site at 6 00. We were either refurbishing the homes are remodeling homes. Or we were preparing them for sale. There were literally hundreds of homes. Day would work well into 10 00 or 11 00 and be expected to get up at 5 00 and be on the jobsite by 6 00. There was a meeting in San Francisco who would meet leave friday night to be in San Francisco by saturday morning. Coming back to get to los angeles, we would leave San Francisco at 9 00 on sunday nights. Get back to l. A. That morning, get in your work close and go to work, and vice versa. It was a very involved environment. A very pushed environment. In terms of people coming freely, that happened on occasion but a lot of times they were stopped at the door. I know this because i worked on security at one time as well. Wednesday nights were always for members only. Those nights will be different from the other nights. Saturday night was open services. People would be invited to comment you would be searched. Who brought you there, who would vouch for you. If no one vouch for you and you just came in cold turkey, so be it. Always a line that was followed and was not always the line it you would think is correct. Sometimes you felt the end justified the means. Im not saying that i agree with that or that i think is right. The other thing was, when new members came, i was observed for a long time. My first day i was called to the third floor and told you are not to be running through all those girlfriends. Youre going to work for the cause. You are going to be a socialist. Life is just changed. And sure enough, it did. It changed in a lot of ways. Some things i cap. The majority of it i threw away. What i did keep was perseverance and focus. No matter what i do for the remainder of my life i will , always be associated with jonestown and the peoples temple and jim jones. My name will always be associated with that, so therefore the burden for me is always set an example, all the time. There is never an off day. Initially, coming back to the u. S. Was just horrendous. We were on the news, we were in the newspapers and magazines. We were all considered crazy. And that was not the case. Peoples temple did not attract ignorant people. It just did not. If i could follow up there. That is my experience from the interviews i have done, and obviously eugene and john know many more people than i do. But the people i interviewed were incredibly bright, they were politically sophisticated. For me, it was very enlightening. I drew up at the same time and i lived communally. I was very politically active in the prisoners right movement. Soledad brother, working with the black panthers. I understood that power of working together. Having a political vision and working together and wanting to change so much that was wrong in american society. As certain point, this visionary movement, we were losing our leaders, they were being assassinated. The war in vietnam kept grinding on. The racial situation in our cities was getting worse there was a poison in the atmosphere. That is the way it felt to me at the time. We lost to Martin Luther king, bobby kennedy, john kennedy, malcolm x. There was a yearning for a new leader to take control. That was the feeling when jim jones came to San Francisco. There were a lot of people who size him up as a charlatan right away. If you read his correspondence, and one point he is endorsing nixon. When he came to San Francisco he was courting liberals. There was a cynicism there that he was practicing. I dont think most of the people in his movement were cynical. I think you were responding to real needs. When you describe what it felt like to be young people it does , feel very warm and embracing. It is taking care of the basic human needs. The basic human needs that society should take care of. To this day, our society does not take care of these needs. So i totally understand what the attraction was. Being in environments that took care of basic needs. That there was a corruption that set in at the top. Whether jim was getting into drugs too much. Thats what jim junior told me when i talked to him. He saw the drugs becoming a bigger and bigger influence on his father. By the time he got here to San Francisco, there was a bubble mentality. A fortress mentality. I interviewed cleve jones, the gay activist who worked closely with harvey milk. Harvey was cynically using jim jones to get those votes. He said go pick up those posters but dont talk to anyone because they tape everything you say. At the same time, their letters right here in the files of harvey milk later when peoples temple went to guyana, is writing to joseph califano, saying dont cut off the social isurity checks because this a beautiful retirement community. He knew differently, but the politicians were taking advantage of what jim jones could deliver. Jim jones was delivering all sorts of things. He was delivering women to george moscone. He knew what the mayors tastes were in women. The corruption was setting in and began to seek out through the liberal leadership in San Francisco, and everyone was implicated, willie brown, dianne feinstein. Right on down the line. We have to separate what the dream was and how it did take care of people but also be honest about the corruption that did set in. Im sure you have documented this very well in your book. It has been documented over and over again. And rightfully so, and i dont dispute any of it. He would use whatever platform he needed, he could tell you what you wanted to feel and believe. He was a master at that. I am not trying to take away from that. I am getting older. At one time i was one of the youngest surviving members. Now i am 55 years old. I just felt there was a side of the story that people did not research. Who cares about what happened to daytoday . How did the people interact . How did that get built . Jim jones didnt do any of that. His hands were as soft as a babies. Things got accomplished in that group. It was very well named, the peoples temple. You were right, he was heavily dependent on drugs. Me and his sons were his personal aides. He was very drugged out. When his advisers came and told him he could never again leave jonestown, his life was over. I said to them, jim, you cant even go to georgetown anymore. Once you leave jonestown you , will be arrested. Once that some can, he turned to drugs. We had to hold him as he walks. In those latter months he was , out of sight sometimes. When he came in to talk, people would say what the hell are you talking about. He would think of something crazy to talk about and try to make something when there was nothing to talk about. There is no more need for faith feelings, no more needs for offerings. No more need for trips. No more need for him to grandstand. It was time for all hands on deck. We had crops to plant and cattle to herd, irrigation that we needed. For the first few months we had no power. The biggest thing that happened was when a generator came and we had power. In the jungle there were no lights. You couldnt see her hand in front of your face. There was a lot going on that he had nothing to do with. If all these Amazing Things are happening, who was doing it . Not him. Those are the things im talking more about. Not to take anything away from the story of jim jones. All the bad things that everyone has written are true, and then some. I would never take anything from that. But there is also a whole other side of this story the people that made this thing transpire. Without jones they could have , succeeded very well. Some of us discussed that. Some of us discussed how to get rid of him in detail, and we almost got to it at one point. It got that serious. Thinking ahead, hindsight is 2020. Had that whole thing is able to go on, my own sister told me personally that she didnt want to be there anymore. She stayed because of us, her younger brothers and sisters. She wanted to stay within the organization. But she wants to do it in the united states. David may i ask a question . I never was able to figure out when i was doing the research, and i hope its not too traumatic question. One of the things i did was i listened to that final fbi tape. It is chilling. I shudder thinking about it. There is an amazing woman, christine miller, who stands up to him at one point. She is the one woman who confront him and says no, lets think about the children here let us not do what you are about , to do. And one point, she seems to have people coming to her side. She is such a forceful and passionate woman. But someone stands up and starts to shame her. It turns out to be annexed boyfriend of hers, someone told me. Exboyfriend. She loses her momentum at that point. The power shifts back to jim jones. It is one of those whatifs that you have to think about. What if she had been able to persuade the crowd . Why do you think more people in the crowd that night did not respond to her pleas . Is very simple. Any young man that wouldve stood up and supported her wouldve been gone. The Basketball Team was gone. I was already in georgetown doing importing. And but it wouldve been any challenge to him publicly wouldve been gone. There was no one there to take up the mantle. There were meetings before that. In july and august, other members challenged jones. That was the last meeting. Anyone that could challenge them are been able to control him, they were gone by then. To you think he timed it for that reason because you were all gone . John i know the timing for congressman ryan and that group could not have happened at a worse time. And it should have happened. They should have been allowed access at any time they wanted. The people that wouldve stood up to jim jones were not there. We will carry that for the rest of our lives. Interesting story, stephanie, my niece, the only reason she is alive. People left there all the time. A lot of people left all the time. People werent just kept in there like a concentration camp. That particular time, i had never heard that place that quiet. You could hear a pin drop. Everyone stopped working. Everyone stopped working. All 900 people came to that meeting. We were going to play basketball. My sister said to me, take stephanie. I would feel better with her being out of here. Stephanie is alive today because of that. She has a beautiful daughter. She is alive because of that decision. There were one of two of us who would leave. Jimmy preferred being in town. He didnt like being in jonestown. In town was georgetown, the capital. Anyone who would have stood up to jim jones, that other people felt safe with, they were all gone. People came in to say goodbye to you because they did have a premonition . I think they just felt like who is going to handle jim jones now . You guys are all gone, what the heck . Just felt more comfortable with all of us around. They saw us oppose him. Stephen argued with him several times. Stephen, we know youre right. We would be the mediators. Even when he asked us to come back, we told him no. Why should we have to come back. Had we known that would have happened, we would have gladly gone back. I dont know if anyone has read about this, but at the time this all happened, tim jones and myself went to the police station. He said, we heard that could have been shots fired. Do you think something could be going on . We said, get us the right away. Like i said, christine stood up. A lot of people think that there was mass suicide, murders. Most people were killed or forced to die. A lot of people have such a devotion to each other. A lot of the kids sat together in a nursery. If one of your kids died, a lot of people werent going to leave their family there. Right or wrong, they just werent. Were some people forced to die . Probably. But i think more people did because once you see your loved ones, you are not going to walk away and leave them. I believe that. I know for a fact, one of the people who got away, she was like my sister. She told my sister, were getting out of here. Where going into the jungle. Eugene and then well get to of those great questions. When they said they were going to the jungle understand, this was a triple canopy jungle. In the daytime, it was dark. At night, you could not see your hand. There were a howler monkeys. There were poison frogs. Anything that was brightly colored was probably poisonous. It was all kinds of species of ants. Going into that jungle at night, if you are running there for safety, imagine what you had to be scared of. I need you all to understand that. This jungle was not friendly in the daytime. Let alone at night. And if you didnt have a full moon even when you came into the opening you couldnt see anything. Thank you both. A series of really interesting questions i want to telescope out a little bit. Perhaps for marshall and david but as well for john and eugene. To what degree did the average san franciscan know of the experience of the peoples temple, and in what ways . If you buy davids book it will be for sale and he will sign those. How would it be done appropriately, fairly . There is an awareness but what really happened, how did it work out . Today i heard of the radio, 35th anniversary of dan white suicide. Moving back to the original recently are here, i dont believe there is much consciousness about something as meaningful as this. Bad news is not something you want to go back over. It is not like you have a world war ii. It is not some occasion that marks a dark chapters and. As you can tell, it is a very complex thing. What was going on with the time, what do we feel about those times now . Its really an interesting story and yet i dont know that there was much awareness. Take us back to those years, what did the average san franciscan of that time, what do you think they knew . I think they were pretty confused. There may be some awareness that it was a political force, especially in city halls. He was on the housing authority, came to meetings. A couple of buses would pull up, he would show up, there would be enormous thunderous clapping for approval of the minutes. This guy ran the show. There were news stories towards 1977, 1978 towards his influence, questions about his background. People, even his allies, knew there was something off about the guy in terms of how they dealt with in. Milk was a big fan publicly, but im not sure he knew better. There were others walking the landscape now took part in it, too. Kind of saw the dark side and went along with it. And i think to their regret. One of our questions is that the chronicle wasnt doing its job. Marshall is the best person to testify. He finally found a way to get that story out. The city editor, because he was compromised by jones, was basically spiking the stories. People were being compromised. People in politics and in media. Today, the city is going through its own great agony now of addiction and displacement. I still dont think we have the information that we need to have in this city, the Political Leadership that is really addressing those issues. Finally, i want to say that there was this sheek syndrome at the time. I do a lot of speaking around town. People have their own stories to tell which is always interesting. This woman told me that her mom was a crazy liberal, a free spirit, and she took me as a little girl to peoples temple meetings. She was a San Francisco bohemian type. I think in those circles, jim jones and the peoples temple seemed really cool. It was integrated, it was progressive, they had great music, im sure a lot of the Church Services were wonderful experiences. If you werent a reporter snooping around a lot of people felt welcome there and felt this was part of something that they wanted to be part of. A professor of history at usf, you get a speech over at uc berkeley, and he said in the 60s or 70s, if you are black in america, the peoples temple was really the best place for you to be. As far as opportunity. Im sorry, that was you. I agree with you. Im terrible with names, that was you. As far as the opportunity that it offered. Jimmy and i, when we came back in 1978, 1979, and we bumped into willie brown at the fillmore. He takes off his mercedes and he is gone. He didnt apologize at all about it. No apologies. One of the questions from the audience is what more can be done to bring accountability to political figures like the brothers brown. One of the questions from the audience was, what more can be done to bring accountability to political figures . Everyone has heard the word untouchable. These people have been in these positions for three decades. It would be difficult if not impossible to make them feel any remorse or responsibility for what they did 30 years ago. I have to say, any person who thinks the same way they thought 30 years ago is not growing up. A player are not the same person they were or support the same things they supported 30 years ago. Another thing is that peoples temple did not attract ignorant people. In terms of finding things on people or compromising politicians, there were people that came in and joined the temple that knew how to do that. This was not jim jones working in a vacuum like a genius, mad scientist. There were people who are gifted at whatever they were gifted that and those tools were used. There is what in particular about the doctrine in particular. I think if you have gotten enough of the flavor of this commitment to social justice and providing needs and to having the socialist aspect was huge. This was a long, continuous, interesting train which i think john picked up, as well as the leadership in the church picked up on, a very rich tradition in black churches as well as progressive churches of the united states. It was a really potent stew of those spiritual but also very liberal and progressives. The questions i think are interesting, one wants to know how much was religion part of a daily existence. Others were how the peoples temple experience thinking through and after jonestown in november of 78. How did it change religion in San Francisco. There is a number of questions about religion. Did it change religion in San Francisco while it was happening and in the aftermath, and then a little bit about religion and the life of the church. Depended on when you joined peoples temple. If you joined in the late 60s, early 70s, it was a religious base. Fundamentalism with healing. If you joined from 19721975, it was a social movement. If you joined between 1975 and the end day, it was about getting away from this racist, oppressive system, this capitalism gone wild. Depending on when you came into the temple dictated how you responded or what you heard and didnt hear. If you came in with a fundamentalist belief that healers heal, that is what you stuck with because that is what drew you. If it was about political causes when you came in, that is what you heard, that is what kept you there. It was about getting away from capitalism and moving to a socialist country. That is all you heard and you dealt with that. You didnt hear any of this other stuff because it was all background noise. You knew why you were there. Once he saw his power grow and how much he could get away with, his indoctrination changed. I would hear him at home preparing what he would say day today. It would go from talking about religion to social issues. It changed fast. Marshall and david, in terms of how peoples temple changed the face of religion, the practice of religion, do you have any thoughts on that . You chronicled the demise of the iris cap machine and the clashes that brought. I think one of the interesting things was the relationship between jim jones and the other africanamerican pastors and ministers in the area. I think eugene and john can probably talk much more informed about this than i am, but i did find out some interesting stories about the tensions. It seemed to me on the one hand, the peoples temple was delivering more than the africanamerican churches that had been there for some time in some ways. That is one reason why peoples temple was able to make roots in this wounded community. There was more energy there, peoples temple was more mobilized politically, there was more a sense that they can do something for you. There was a resentment on the part of other africanamerican churches and there was this upstart and just moved in. He is white. That was weird, wasnt it, i think for a lot of the africanamerican leadership . They became compromise later on as well. Some of the africanamerican churches in the community. There was a resentment, a new guy in town. There was some recruiting, some enlarging of the flock that he needed to do here. He would pay bills at other churches, he would flatter them with letters and calls. Taking 1020 all ladies back to his church when he could. It was a very skillful marketing job and he was very toughminded about this. As far as the exposure of the church, the endgame diminishing the role of religion and San Francisco, that is a big topic. I would hesitate to play reverend here and know what longterm affect the peoples temple had on religious life in San Francisco. I would like to think not a lot just because of the downbeat kind of history we are citing here. But im sure it made a lot of people cynical and doubtful about religious leaders for a while. We are to give you the last word. Some questions i didnt get to, im sorry. I want to rewelcome you back to your library, the toys made from the workshop, the reverend jones robe is out. Some powerful artifacts. I think the issue is this. You have a white man coming to town. He is bringing 70 to 100 people per bus. All the kids climbed up top. Nine 100 people on those buses at any one time. He is getting accommodations. He is having conversations that people always wanted and could not get. He is cutting deals when i asked for the same deal and couldnt get it. This guy over here, jim jones, is not only poaching their members but he is giving them a reason to leave. The end play is, not only did he poach them, not only did he get accommodations, but that he is on the housing commission, which is a powerful position in San Francisco. A lot of patronage. I think back and i started going to college, i was kind of like, i dont want to talk about it. I hope nobody recognizes me. Somebody many kids that i met my age, 50 at least knew all about the church. In the bay area it was like some young people about it and their parents wanted them there. The article came out and it was a good article. It was funny because i was like, what article . All i heard was your name. I was like oh, this article. I want to thank all of you in the audience and my four amazing panelists, delving into the subject that i think is noble work that the California Historical society is honored to do. There is no one simple, easy answer. But between and among these four amazing souls, i think we have had a Pretty Amazing time. Thank all of you for coming. [applause] we will adjourn. Talk amongst yourselves, talk to us, by davids book. Members of the historical society, if you buy it tonight, just for you 20 off special tonight. If youre not a member, my staff can totally take care of you. Thanks from all of us and good night. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] William Williamsburg virginia was a bustling area with a large enslaved population. American history tv will return return to williamsburg and the life from the historic district. We will see revolutionaries and british loyalists mingle on streets, and the governors palace, home to king george the thirds your representative. Hear from a master blacksmith and go behind the scenes at the costume design center. Viewers can ask questions of historians, curators, and interpreters throughout the day. Live from Colonial Williamsburg beginning at 11 00 a. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3. Cspans touring cities across the country exploring American History. Next, a look at our recent visit to syracuse, new york. You are watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend, on cspan3. The erie canal is really an artificial river that was created to attach the great lakes to the atlantic ocean. And the way that occurred was they build a canal from buffalo to albany and attach it to the hudson river and then new york city. There were settlements on the frontier