As Tim Carter watched his baby son Malcolm die, Jonestown was erupting in a frenzy of death and screaming. And although reels of tape, eyewitness accounts and written documents indicate that many, if not most, of the 918 deaths resulted from a scrupulously planned mass murder, the event went down in history as a mass suicide—the self-slaughter of a crazed group of whacko cultists lining up like sheep and docilely swallowing Fla-Vor-Ade laced with cyanide.
Actual photo of The People's Temple. Image courtesy of the California Historical Society
Survivors, including Carter, tell a different story in The People's Temple, running through Sept. 28 in a riveting production at the American Theater Company. That story tells of guards forcibly holding the jaws shut of children who tried to spit out the cocktail. Of seniors awaking to gun fire and hiding under their beds in terror. Of people being shot, strangled, stabbed and suffocated by Jones' 'security' detail.
'The premise that everybody lined up because they wanted to die is bullshit,' said Carter, who lost his son and his wife in Jonestown, 'This was mass murder.'
Carter's words are integral to the docudrama spearheaded by the gifted Leigh Fondakowski, the director who also brought The Laramie Project to life. Like The Laramie Project, The People's Temple is the result of hundreds of interviews and an exhaustive examination of archival materials.
'I worried about how in the world we were going to make these crazy cultists relatable to audiences,' Fondakowski recalled. It was an unfounded worry. 'The thing that struck me interviewing the survivors was how normal they were. These were thoughtful, sensitive, politically minded people,' she said. 'They cared deeply about others. They were willing to make great sacrifices for others. That's one of the greatest tragedies of the story. These were people who wanted so much to do good, and yet they wound up dying. Of course there were drug addicts and outcasts and others in the group—but mostly, they were what we'd all call normal.'
The People's Temple traces the history of the group started by Jim Jones in the late 1950s as an amalgam of Christian church and social justice organization. Jones began in Indiana, founding the first interracial church in the state. By 1961, he was the executive director of the Indianapolis Human Rights Organization. After the People's Temple moved to Northern California in the early 1970s, Jones and his church became a political powerhouse. Alongside Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver, Jones was honored as a leader in human rights. With a snap of his fingers he could activate his congregation and decide the outcome of an election.
And the Temple grew wealthy—very wealthy—as members increasingly signed over their homes and savings. The fat coffers came in handy after a small group of Temple defectors started talking to newspapers about Jones' disciplinary tactics and substantiating rumors about some of the other disturbing elements to life inside the People's Temple. As The People's Temple ( the play ) details, within 48 hours of two highly critical exposes of the Temple, Jones was able to put over 600 members on airplanes to Guyana. Their orders? Clear the jungle and start a utopian society where they wouldn't be persecuted by pesky reporters and talkative 'traitors.'
Yet for all Fondakowski's exhaustive research, the production doesn't explain—can't explain—just who Jim Jones was and precisely how and why so many people died.
'People want to know what happened. I want to know what happened and I was there. I don't think there is a single truth,' said Carter. 'There's not a person alive who can tell me who Jim Jones was, including his own kids. Was he a good guy gone bad? A bad guy gone worse? I think he was both. And he was good, very good, at hiding his sickness.'
Jones is played by Darrell Cox, who in a deft turn, also plays Stephen, one of Jones' sons who survived the massacre because he was in Georgetown playing in a basketball tournament the day Jones put his 'Last Stand' plan into action.
' [ Jones' son ] Stephen says he was a sick, sick man, and I think that's true,' said Cox. 'The the thing is, this isn't really Jim Jones' story. It's the story of all the people he affected. I get emotional whenever I start thinking about the people [ in the play ] who are still living, or who are related to people who died. But this is very much about giving them a voice. And giving a voice to the people who died there.'
If Jones remains a cipher, so does the exact nature of the People's Temple. 'People say we were a cult. I have trouble with that,' said Carter. 'We were social activists, not religious zealots.' Indeed, the FBI has labeled the group a social movement—not a cult.
'Cult' implies members who believed Jones was God—which certainly wasn't' true in his case, Carter added.
'I hated him for the last few years. I thought he was an asshole,' Carter added. 'A lot of us did. We stayed because we thought we were doing good. And we thought he was going to die because he was so very, very sick. A lot of us figured he'd die and we could all go on about our work and live our lives in peace. Maybe I was an idiot. Maybe I was myopic. But there's a big difference between staying in the Temple because you want to do good in the world and staying because you worshipped Jim Jones.'
Carter remarried years ago, and now has three children, 17, 20 and 22, who he described as 'the sunshine of my life.' He's had a career as a travel agent, and looks back on Jonestown with pain but not soul-crushing guilt.
'We were human beings,' he said. 'Does that mean I don't look back and shake my head sometimes at my own myopia? No. But I hope that when people see the play on some level they recognize that the people in Jonestown were not a 'them,' they were part of us. All of us. Until now, they haven't been afforded much humanity.'
The People's Temple continues through Sept. 28 at the American Theater Comapny, 1909 W. Byron. For tickets, call 773-409-4125.
