During the 1950s, American reverend Jim Jones founded the People’s Temple, a church for socialist revolution. He promised his majority female and multiracial following equality for all. But people soon began noticing discrepancies between the theory and his practice. Jones’s inner circle, for example, was all white. And then the “White Nights” began — suicide trainings.
The utopia ended on November 8th, 1978, when a total of over 900 of Jones’s followers died of murder-suicides at Jonestown, Guyana, Latin America. Jones had relocated much of his congregation there in the preceding years. Most members had been living there for about two years, often cramped together in simple huts and forced to do unpaid work up to twelve hours a day.
The reverend managed to pay for his colony using the approximate $63,000 in welfare checks his members surrendered to him every month. Jones apparently hoarded the money. Although his personal wealth was estimated to be around $28 million around the time of his death, everyone, including the reverend’s family, had been living in poverty.
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