Democracy Dies in Darkness

The lessons of Jonestown could help us prevent terrorism and mass shootings today

Providing mass killers with less of a spotlight would weaken the allure

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This Nov. 18, 1978, photo shows the bodies of five people, including Rep. Leo J. Ryan, D-Calif., on the airstrip at Port Kaittuma, Guyana, after an ambush by members of the Peoples Temple cult. (Tim Reiterman/The San Francisco Examiner/AP)
Perspective by

Forty years ago today, a charismatic white minister named Jim Jones compelled 912 members of his Peoples Temple, most of whom were African American, to drink cyanide in a rural encampment in Guyana.

The combination mass murder-mass suicide — we will probably never know to what degree it was one versus the other — remains one of the most baffling events of the American century. It does not fit into any of our usual explanatory boxes: not left versus right, black versus white, rich versus poor or even religious versus secular.

By
David Chappell is professor of history at the University of Oklahoma and author of "Waking from the Dream: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr" and other books on human rights in the U.S. He teaches history at the University of Oklahoma.

Made by History is sponsored by:

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Cambridge University Press
Oregon State Center for the Humanities
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The Hall Center for the Humanities
Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest
University of North Dakota College of Education & Human Development
Florida International University Department of History
FIU Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs
FIU Wolfsonian Public Humanites Lab
  • The Dale Center for the Study of War & Society at The University of Southern Mississippi
  • George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center
  • Annenberg School for Communication - University of Pennsylvania
  • Cambridge University Press
  • Oregon State Center for the Humanities
  • Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
  • The Hall Center for the Humanities
  • Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest
  • University of North Dakota College of Education & Human Development
  • Florida International University Department of History
  • FIU Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs
  • FIU Wolfsonian Public Humanites Lab
  • University of Pennsylvania Press
  • American Political History Institute
  • University of North Carolina Press
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