1978 – In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones leads his Peoples Temple to a mass murder–suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American cult leader, preacher and mass murderer who founded and led the Peoples Temple between 1955 and 1978. Jones and the members of his inner circle planned and orchestrated a mass murder–suicide that resulted in the deaths of over 900 people which he described as “revolutionary suicide”, a term coined by Huey P. Newton, in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978, including the assassination of U.S. congressman Leo Ryan. Jones and the events that occurred at Jonestown have had a defining influence on society's perception of cults. Jones founded the organization that became the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis in 1955. In 1965, Jones moved the Temple to California. Beginning in the late 1960s, reports of abuse began to surface as Jones became increasingly vocal in his rejection of traditional Christianity and began promoting a form of anti-capitalism that he called "Apostolic Socialism" and making claims of his own divinity. Jones became progressively more controlling of his followers in Peoples Temple, which had over 3,000 members at its peak. His followers engaged in a communal lifestyle in which many turned over all their income and property to Jones and Peoples Temple who directed all aspects of community life. Following a period of negative publicity and reports of abuse at Peoples Temple, Jones ordered the construction of the Jonestown commune in Guyana in 1974 and convinced or compelled many of his followers to live there with him. He claimed that he was constructing a socialist paradise free from the oppression of the United States government. By 1978, reports surfaced of human rights abuses and accusations that people were being held in Jonestown against their will. U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led a delegation to the commune in November of that year to investigate these reports. While boarding a return flight with some former Temple members who wished to leave, Ryan and four others were murdered by gunmen from Jonestown. Jones then ordered a mass murder-suicide that claimed the lives of 912 commune members; most of the members died by drinking Flavor Aid laced with cyanide, and those who resisted were forcefully injected with cyanide.
