A 30-Year Look Back at San Francisco's Most Tragic November Ever -- Part I

On November 18, 1978, Over 900 People From San Francisco, Most of Them African-Americans, Lost Their Lives in the People's Temple Massacre at Jonestown, Guyana -- One of the Worst Religion-Related Tragedies in Modern Times


Before November 1978, the deadliest event to rock San Francisco was the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906. But over a ten-day period that began 30 years ago Tuesday, more than 900 people from the San Francisco Bay Area lost their lives in two back-to-back tragedies -- one of which occurred thousands of miles away, the other right inside San Francisco City Hall. On November 18, more than 900 people were killed in a mass murder-suicide at the People's Temple compound at Jonestown, Guyana (pictured above). Nine days later, George Moscone, the mayor of San Francisco, and Harvey Milk, a first-term member of the city's Board of Supervisors who was the nation's first openly gay elected official, were assassinated in their City Hall offices. At first, there were suspicions that the City Hall murders were related to the People's Temple massacre, but no evidence has ever surfaced to link the two tragic events. (File photo by the Associated Press)


(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, November 17, 2008)

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SPECIAL REPORT
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By SUSAN SWARD
San Francisco Chronicle

(Part I of a two-part series.)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Thirty years ago, two unimaginable tragedies jolted San Francisco in less than a fortnight.

On November 18, 1978, more than 900 men, women and children -- many of them poor African Americans from San Francisco -- perished after drinking a cyanide-laced potion at People's Temple founder Jim Jones' compound in the jungles of Guyana.

Nine days later, while San Franciscans struggled to grasp the enormity of that tragedy, Dan White, a fiercely conservative former member of the city's Board of Supervisors, assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the nation's first openly gay elected official.

White was a former police officer and firefighter who had campaigned against the city's "social deviates," as he branded San Francisco's large and politically powerful gay community. With the bullets he fired, White wrought changes he could never have imagined.

By killing Milk, he energized the gay movement worldwide. By killing the progressive Moscone and making Dianne Feinstein the city's first female mayor (as the then-president of the Board of Supervisors, she was first in line of succession to the mayor's office), he sent the city down a path of political moderation that would last for nearly a decade.

Feinstein, now a U.S. senator, was a centrist mayor, friendly to business. Under her watch, dozens of skyscrapers were built and the city's skyline was transformed.

The mass suicides in Jonestown also had a fallout -- the disturbing lessons learned about how Jones rose to power and the stark pain that the deaths caused people whose relatives or friends perished there.

For some, the assassinations and the Jonestown deaths underscored a perception that the city -- long an enclave of protest -- was a metropolis on the brink, beset with violence and disorder.

"These two events built on a reputation of San Francisco as a bastion of far left politics combined with a certain amount of kookiness," said Chester Hartman, an expert on San Francisco urban renewal. "It was a trauma then, and I think it still is."

[The City Hall assassinations will be reviewed in greater detail in Part II of this series on Thursday.]

JONESTOWN SITE OF 'A REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE'

Three decades ago on November 19, the Guyanese government dispatched troops to Jonestown, the agricultural settlement the Reverend Jim Jones and his followers had established in the South American country's northeast corner. There they found the catastrophic result of Jones' suicide order: More than 900 bodies lay scattered on the ground. About a third of the dead were children under 18.

Jones had ordered his followers to kill themselves after U.S. Representative Leo Ryan (D-California) visited the compound on a fact-finding trip and left with a group of People's Temple members who wanted to defect. For Jones, those defections were shattering. A People's Temple security squad followed Ryan's group to a nearby airport and opened fire on them, killing Ryan and four others.

Ryan, who represented the suburban communities of San Mateo County just south of San Francisco, became the first -- and, to date, the only -- member of Congress to die in the line of duty.

When people recall Jonestown, they usually remember the suicides. They know less about the man. Jim Jones was born in 1931 into a poor family in Lynn, Indiana. He was the son of a disabled World War I veteran. By the 1950s, he had become a pastor in Indianapolis, and in 1956, he opened his own church, which he dubbed the People's Temple.

In the mid-1960s, Jones and more than 100 followers moved to Redwood Valley, California, about 125 miles north of San Francisco. In his sermons, Jones preached social justice and promised that he -- "Dad" to his followers -- would care for his people.

1972: JONES AND HIS CHURCH ARRIVES IN A CHANGING CITY -- AND IT CHANGED HIM

In 1972, Jones moved his church to a former Masonic auditorium located in San Francisco's Fillmore District. The city he settled in was in transition.

Manufacturing plants were moving out of town. Waves of Asian and Latino immigrants, along with gay men and lesbians, were transforming neighborhoods that had previously been home to working-class Irish and Italians.

In the Fillmore District, affluent whites were buying homes that African Americans had owned or rented. In this city of the 1970s, Jones' church attracted hundreds of new members.

It was an only-in-San Francisco phenomenon, said U.S. Attorney Joe Russoniello, who later successfully prosecuted People's Temple follower Larry Layton on conspiracy charges in connection with Ryan's murder. "I don't know of any other place in the country where Jones could have gone as far as he did," Russoniello said.

In his church, Jones gave sermons advocating liberal ideals -- pushing integration, attacking sexism, urging care for the poor. But behind the scenes, there was another, darker world: Jones, who was married, had many affairs with both female and male followers and bragged about his conquests.

He staged healing "miracles" by touching the ill and injured. And when church members committed relatively inconsequential misdeeds, such as not listening closely enough to Jones' sermons, there were public beatings with a belt or paddle.

In public, Jones formed close ties with municipal leaders who valued his ability to turn out hundreds of volunteers during election campaigns. Much that he did looked praiseworthy. His congregation included many poor African-Americans, and he offered social programs to help them.

JONES' CHURCH AMASSES TREMENDOUS POLITICAL INFLUENCE

Many credited Jones' followers with helping to elect Moscone, a liberal who edged out his opponent, a conservative real-estate agent named John Barbagelata, by about 4,200 votes in the 1975 mayoral election. Moscone named Jones to the commission that oversees the city's Housing Authority, while San Francisco District Attorney Joe Freitas hired a Jones follower, Tim Stoen, as a deputy prosecutor.

In September 1976, Jones gave a testimonial dinner for himself at the church. Seated at the head table with Jones were California Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally, state Assemblymember Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), Mayor Moscone, District Attorney Freitas and others.

Jones' alliance with the city's Democratic leadership was "a quid pro quo," said Agar Jaicks, who was chair of the San Francisco County Democratic Central Committee at the time. "Jones wanted power, and he provided Democratic candidates with volunteers to help win elections."

Jaicks said he eventually grew "very disturbed" by Jones' mix of "Marxism, faith healing and bodyguards with guns." But he said Jones, who was white, was also seen by many "as propping up African-Americans, giving them opportunities. No one wanted to see the negatives. No one wanted to see this as a cult."

Jones also curried favor with the local media. In 1977, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Marshall Kilduff wanted to write a story about Jones, but then-City Editor Steve Gavin rejected the idea.

With freelance reporter Phil Tracy, Kilduff began working on an article about Jones for New West magazine, the now-defunct West Coast sister to New York magazine, which at the time were both owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. One day Kilduff went to attend a People's Temple service -- and was surprised to find Gavin sitting in the front row. Gavin was a member of Jones' church.

JONES MOVES PEOPLE'S TEMPLE TO GUYANA AFTER MAGAZINE EXPOSE

The New West article began to turn public opinion against Jones: It detailed defectors' accounts of beatings and fake cancer healings and told how members had given over to the People's Temple the deeds to their homes. A barrage of negative news coverage followed.

Fleeing the publicity, Jones moved with hundreds of followers to Guyana, a former British colony in South America. The Jonestown settlement included cottages, dormitories and a vegetable garden. Some followers found it a place of peace. But defectors said there were armed guards, public beatings and mass suicide drills.

The ghastly finale came the following year. Congressman Ryan had heard from families worried about relatives living at Jonestown. He agreed to go on a fact-finding visit to the compound. He also pledged that if he found any people who wanted to flee, he would bring them out with him.

With several reporters, Ryan flew to Guyana on November 14, 1978.

DAY OF MASS DEATH STARTED WITH FATAL ATTACK ON CONGRESSMAN

During Ryan's visit, dozens of Temple members pleaded to leave with him. Jones became extremely agitated. On the second day of Ryan's visit to the settlement, a People's Temple follower lunged to attack Ryan and had to be restrained. Ryan, his group and some defectors left the compound and gathered on an airport runway about six miles away.

Temple guards arrived and fired on them. Five, including Ryan and San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson, were slain; ten others, including Ryan aide Jackie Speier, Chronicle reporter Ron Javers and Examiner reporter Tim Reiterman, were wounded.

Back at Jonestown, Jones was speaking to his followers, instructing them to kill themselves. Word spread that Ryan had been killed. "The congressman is dead," Jones said, according to a tape of the sermon. Referring to cyanide, he said: "Please give us some medication. ... There's no convulsions." On the tape, babies are heard crying. Jones' last words were: "We committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world."

The next day, arriving soldiers identified the 47-year-old Jones' body. He and a top aide had died from bullet wounds. More than 900 others succumbed after drinking fruit punch laced with cyanide.

Today there is no unanimity over the lessons of Jonestown.

Some, like retired California Superior Court Judge Quentin Kopp, who was a member of the city's Board of Supervisors at the time, view Jonestown as "a horrifying blip" in San Francisco's history. Others say it is a story of good intentions gone awry.

People who joined the People's Temple could not see at the start how it would end, says Fielding McGehee of the Jonestown Institute at San Diego State University, which was established to document the tragedy and its aftermath.

"People did not join the People's Temple so they could go down to a jungle and drink cyanide and die," said McGehee, whose wife, institute co-founder Rebecca Moore, lost two sisters and a nephew at Jonestown. "They joined wanting to make a better world, but in order to fulfill their dreams they made compromises and mistakes along the way that they shouldn't have."

The Reverend Cecil Williams, pastor of San Francisco's Glide Memorial Methodist Church, says Jones was able to blind people with his charisma, and the catastrophe that occurred at Jonestown "opened our eyes. We won't go along today with anyone who will run over poor people."

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THURSDAY: Part II: A Double Assassination at San Francisco City Hall.

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Volume III, Number 75
Special Report Copyright 2008, The Hearst Newspapers.
The 'Skeeter Bites Report Copyright 2008, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

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