Who said...drink the kool aid

There is speculation that he may have taken his own life, or that his nurse Annie Moore fatally shot him before she killed herself in the same manner. Here are 13 little-known facts about Jonestown.

People have wondered how Jim Jones, a man who preached racial and social equality, turned evil. He performed experiments on animals and conducted funerals for them. A friend of mine told me that he saw Jimmy kill a cat with a knife. The church stood out for of its multiracial membership, which was quite revolutionary during a time of racial segregation.

Sometime the early s, Jones came across an Esquire article that listed the nine safe places in the world in the event of a nuclear catastrophe. He, like some latter-day Moses, would lead the people to live interracially. His church empire would later extend to San Francisco and Los Angeles by the mid s. The Peoples Temple is often branded as a cult whose members blindly devoted their allegiance to a man and a cause at the expense of their own selves and livelihoods.

During their time in the Temple, these devoted and hard-working people performed altruistic deeds for the community, and some of them had turned their lives around by getting off of drugs and crime. It was amazing to be walking into a place and have African-Americans really warmly welcoming you and talking to you, and sharing stories with you.

It was sweet. Looking to expand the reach of his organization, Jones frequently met with Father Divine , a popular, if controversial, black evangelist and founder of the Peace Mission movement. Born sometime in the early s, Father Divine started a religious movement in the s that drew huge numbers of worshippers who saw him as God. As described in Raven , a judge suddenly died shortly after handing down the preacher a prison sentence for being a public nuisance. Father Divine, who lived in an estate in Pennsylvania with his wife Mother Divine, possessed the qualities that Jones mirrored for himself and the Peoples Temple: He had a multiracial congregation, believed in racial equality and preached the abstention of sex.

In December , he was arrested for lewd conduct at a Los Angeles movie theater. And during his final months in Jonestown, Jones was addicted to pharmaceutical drugs. A married man who adopted children of different racial backgrounds, Jones also engaged in sexual relations with some of his female and male followers. He was the only heterosexual on the planet, and that the women were all lesbians; the guys were all gay.

And so anyone who showed in interest in sex was just compensating. Tim Carter, another ex-member, says that Jones hated romantic relationships within the Peoples Temple because they were seen as a threat to the cause and that the members should be focused on their work. In his Indiana days, Jones once sold pet monkeys door to door. Muggs became sort of a mascot for the Temple under the care of Joyce Touchette, whose family were devoted members to the Temple.

Together she and Tim, who left the church a year later, sought to get John back through the U. By that time, John was already in Guyana, and Jones adamantly refused to hand him over, despite court orders that he must do so.

In the end, John Victor Stoen was among approximately people aged 17 years or younger found dead in Jonestown.

The turning point for me was in the jungle one day, when one of the aluminum roofs slipped off one of the cottages and made this loud bang. Jim Jones went out of his skin. He was terrified. Can you talk a bit about that? He called me down to his cabin one day. He had designated me to be one of his partners, which was a dubious distinction. I had never, ever told him I loved him. It was a flip of the quarter. He told me one time, while he was close, that he would like to die while strangling me.

He had hands around my neck. From that point on, I minded my manners with Jim Jones. My mother was schizophrenic, and he started really reminding me of her.

I was one of his many secretaries, and he had me writing all kinds of letters—letters to people in the government, letters to people who had defected. When he started dictating those rambling, page letters, I realized they were the ramblings of a madman. I needed to keep his trust in me and get out the first opportunity that arrived.

There were a number of lawsuits going on in United States, calling on Jim Jones to come back. So Jim sent Mark back to the United States to handle the lawsuits and take care of the situation. I suggested that I go back with Mark and work as his secretary. So Jim sent me back. I went to San Francisco and packed up my stuff—what little I had—and said I was going to the dentist. Then I got the next plane out to New York. I was as shocked as anyone. They were beautiful and hardworking.

I regret being in the Temple, regret my role in it, but the only thing I can do for redemption is to live my life and serve people as long as I can.

We all wore both white hats and black hats. Except Jim Jones—his hat was primarily black with maybe a little polka dot of white. It makes me shudder. We have to ask ourselves, why did people leave this country and go with Jim Jones to Guyana? How would you define it? I was fortunate that I had an opportunity to escape and I took it. Even then, I thought Jim Jones would find me and kill me.

I just wanted to have my own life, however short it might be. My goal, in fact, was that I wanted to live to be 30 so I could have a rich and full life. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. You say that you want people to remember the good parts of Jonestown.

What were the good parts? Toxicology reports found high levels of barbiturates sedatives in his blood. Jones was reportedly hooked on a variety of substances, possibly explaining his increasingly erratic behavior over the decades. In the wake of the tragedy at Jonestown, the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" became a popular term for blind obedience, as the Temple members had apparently accepted cups of fruity poison willingly.

What's strange is that, according to various accounts, the primary beverage used at Jonestown was actually Flavor Aid sometimes styled "Flav-R-Aid" -- although there is photographic evidence that packets of both Kool-Aid and Flavor Aid were present at the scene. But initial media coverage described the scene differently. One read, in part emphasis added :. A pair of woman's eyeglasses, a towel, a pair of shorts, packets of unopened Flavor-Aid lie scattered about waiting for the final cleanup that may one day return Jonestown to the tidy, if overcrowded, little community it once was.

This snippet was from an article printed in the Washington Post on December 17, , written by Charles A. Less than a month after the deaths, here was major media specifying that the beverage was "Flavor Aid," but "Kool-Aid" is the term that stuck in Americans' minds. First, Kool-Aid was a better known brand than Flavor Aid.

Flavor Aid was a Jel Sert product first sold in and it was a rival of Kool-Aid, which was introduced in in powdered form. Trivia note: prior to the Kool-Aid powder, the same beverage was available in liquid form as "Fruit Smack. So when Americans thought about a powdered fruity drink mix at least one that was not "Tang" , "Kool-Aid" came to mind as the market leader. There was one man who became completely withdrawn I want to say catatonic, because we tried to bring him out of it, and could not make contact at all Because of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test , many Americans were familiar with the idea of being urged to drink Kool-Aid containing, um, unusual chemicals -- even if they hadn't themselves participated in an Acid Test.

This familiarity perversely boosted the profile of Kool-Aid, especially in this particular adulterated circumstance. Third, plenty of evidence suggests that both Kool-Aid and Flavor Aid were present at Jonestown -- though there was more of the latter. Therefore, in a sense, everybody's right. It may simply come down to whether the term "Kool-Aid" is catchier than "Flavor Aid," and history decided -- much to the consternation of Kool-Aid's marketing department.

For a thorough examination of the cultural and linguistic effects of the Jonestown massacre, check out " Drinking the Kool-Aid: The Cultural Transformation of a Tragedy " by Rebecca Moore.

In it, she makes the point:. References [to "drinking the Kool-Aid"] are not uniformly negative. On the contrary, they describe the positive qualities of corporate loyalty or team spirit.

For example, when Michael Jordan, a former Chicago Bulls basketball player who now plays for a competing team, returned to his former home to attend a Chicago Bears football game, he was willing to drink "Bears' Kool-Aid. Moore's paper is just one part of the encyclopedic Jonestown Institute website. It's also worth checking out this Chicago Tribune story rounding up various media mentions of Kool-Aid versus Flavor Aid, 30 years after the Jonestown massacre.