Glimpses of Paradise

There is a church a block away from where I live. I go there to visit a tree. One of its branches has descended upon the earth, bending heavily from its weight; a forked stick helps support it and hold it up. I also go there to see a spirit mural. It is a beautiful mosaic of a white-tailed dove crowned with what I imagine is intended as a symbol of the holy spirit. Some may interpret it a phoenix rising. Its tail spreads across four columns of the church, spawning various symbols—hearts, shells, angels, and my favorite, a couple - the silhouette of a man and a woman. My idealist self places her fingers on the shadowy figures and yearns, wishing for these symbols to materialize into existence. This idealist yearning, this ideal is something like the glimpses of paradise that I see in the eyes of the believers in Peoples Temple, particularly in the photographs of the children, the dancers, and the older women who believe in the possibility of healing, of all races coming together as a unit under the banner of love.

Child with baby sloth, circa 1974-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 30, folder 6; California Historical Society.

What is Peoples Temple? Difficult question. Difficult and perhaps impossible to answer. The more you learn about Peoples Temple, the more questions begin to multiply and answers become hazy. Working on the Peoples Temple Publication Department records, a project funded by the National Historical Records and Publications Commission (NHPRC), has provided me with some insights into this important time in history. It’s worth keeping in mind the context of the photography prints--they were designed to serve the Publications Department’s purposes including fundraising, church member activities, public relations, and community outreach.

Working on the Peoples Temple photographs and some of the textual material gives one a glimpse into the ideal that was sought from its conception. Perhaps you come upon a beautiful child taking a stroll in the jungle at Jonestown, discovering a flower and pausing for a moment to consider it and hold it with care.

Child with flower, circa 1974-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 30, folder 6; California Historical Society.

One might come upon an image of a troupe of African American dancers in exuberant dress, striking a pose with raised fists, a symbol for Black power. Their youthful energy electrifying you and making you remember what it was like to yearn for equality, making you still yearn for it like the dream lives on.

African dancers, circa 1975-1976; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 30, folder 2; California Historical Society.

Then there is the look that the woman at church gives her pastor, in whom she places her complete trust. So what if he is forged from another clan, another color? He has embraced you and accepted you and welcomed you in this space that you believe is your new home. Your history is a heavy tree branch that needs holding up a bit.

Woman at church service with Jim Jones, circa 1974-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 31, folder 2; California Historical Society.

Some observers like to fixate on the end, but sometimes forget to consider or question the beginning and the ensuing journey. What impetus drove this engine? We cannot dismiss the importance of symbols and the meaning they carry in our frail vessels. We yearn for community and company. The photographic prints and textual material in the newly processed Peoples Temple Publications Department records are a testament to such yearning. Whether one considers the tragic end, regarding it as a warning not to trust those who claim benevolence and promise protection then betray such a trust, or whether one suspends their disbelief and allows the yearning to take hold through the eyes and deeds of the beholder, one may catch a glimpse of paradise. A glimpse of paradise in the sense that, look—it can be all simple, we can all work together under the same roof, share the same land and space, dance to the same drum beat. Yet this simple thing eludes us continually so we are always just catching glimpses of what could be.

Two youth in Jonestown, circa 1974-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 30, folder 4; California Historical Society.

But ... what if we were to reframe the question? What if we were to temper our idealism with a dose of realism? As I was contemplating the Peoples Temple after processing the photo prints, a play titled Tetecan: An Aztec Tragedy, from another of CHS’s collections caught my eye in the vault. I opened it to the foreword, which besides some anachronistic observations on the Aztecs, had something interesting written there:

“Each of us in his destined hour, in hope or extremity, mounts the steps of idealism. In all times and places, fervid youths have climbed in search of idealism, driven upward by sight of the seething plain of life across which the light of brotherhood appears at times to burn fitfully. Too many of them have climbed in vain.”

Sometimes the young of spirit desire to undo the imperfect system that keeps the light of brotherhood from burning with a peaceful flame. We dare give birth to hope and begin to climb the mountain of idealism, leaving the plain of life behind; almost obliterating it and starting anew with our own thoughts, on our own terms, seeking like-minded people. We want paradise on earth, now. We tire of waiting for elusive promises. This, however, can be a dangerous proposition. Humans are imperfect beings embedded with foibles and faults, often drawn to extremes. Often reacting to others’ extremes—from greed to idealism. The lessons imparted to us in the narratives of the Peoples Temple and those who seek to explain the church are often extreme, understandably mirroring such narratives. But what about the lessons imparted in the brief glimpses of the promise of paradise the eye may draw from some of the photographs? Can anything be extracted from these? Even if there’s a strong possibility that some of it was curated to fit the purpose of publication?

I think there is something important to be extracted from these brief glimpses. I think part of the lesson lies in contemplating the extremes, sure, but also, considering the journey in between, the fissures where love was let in. This is a quiet journey that involves reflection, pause, and silence.

Church members praying during service, circa 1965-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 30, folder 9; California Historical Society.

Processing the Peoples Temple photo prints was something we took our time with. We sleeved some of the larger prints, housing them in new folders while keeping categories labeled by the publication department or creating new folder categories if they reflected a theme such as with the “African Dancers” folder. For some of the smaller prints such as passport photos or member photos we opted to house these in envelopes to keep them from falling from their folders…. I wanted to contain the photographs as if I could contain the spirit of the lives reflected there. I wanted to keep a level of privacy and respect to Temple members photographed even though their lives have become very public. Sometimes it’s the smallest details that show people we care.

The Peoples Temple photographs give us glimpses of a paradise the youth in us has yearned to see. But did many of them climb in vain? I like to think that the climb was not in vain. I like to do a challenging thing—to turn from the sensationalized end and pause a bit to study the faces of the people whose life held meaning and the potential for a longer, better life. The idealist in me keeps searching for these glimpses, hoping they bloom and multiply and one day materialize like during my yearning by the spirit mural. The realist in me, however, reminds herself to also temper such yearning given the nature of man and its excesses. It’s a challenging task—to both acknowledge the end, to grasp the fitful yearning of utopia so as to temper it and prevent it from happening again, but also to not forget the fissures and glimpses of paradise where life and love seeped through.

Woman with baby girl, circa 1974-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; Box 30, folder 4; California Historical Society.

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Written by Lynda Letona, Assistant Archivist & Reference Librarian at California Historical Society (CHS).

Photos digitized by Marissa Friedman, Imaging Technician and Cataloger at CHS.

A finding aid for the People Temple collection can be found here.

References:
Brown, Hugh. 1950. Foreword to Tetecan: An Aztec tragedy. San Francisco: Bohemian Club.

Photographic Prints, circa 1965-1978; Peoples Temple Publications Department Records, MS 3791; California Historical Society.

The processing of this collection was made possible by funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).

The Disappearing Photos of Peoples Temple

Among our collection of Peoples Temple Publicity Department materials is a group of ruined photographs – some faded completely to white, others thickly scattered with flaking pigment, a few recognizable but chemically streaked and melted. These photos are relics of the Temple’s practice of faith healing. It’s well known that Jim Jones’ flamboyant “healings” were at the center of Temple culture, drawing crowds to services and converting many curious visitors into serious believers. Less well understood, however, is the fact that Peoples Temple offered the service through the mail.

A few of the "disappearing photos" that sent to the Peoples Temple mailing list

This is hard to imagine in today’s connected world, but the Temple was many things to many people, depending on whether you attended services, when you joined, and whether your primary interaction was through the Peoples Temple mailing list. Without much opportunity for members to compare stories, Jones could present his organization to different people as a leftist utopian movement, a mainstream Christian church, an anti-Christian church whose pastor mocked the Scriptures and claimed to be the only God his followers needed, an ecstatic Pentecostal-style revival, or a low-key prosperity gospel ministry.

It was the latter that dominated the mailing list, which sent out a beautifully designed monthly newsletter. This mailer would usually include a donation request, and often also a small relic – a piece of Jones’ robe, a flask of holy oil, an anointed penny – which was said to give the recipient luck, or send material rewards their way. CHS’s “disappearing photos” of Jones were included with the mailer in August 1974. Believers would place the images on affected parts of their body and watch the images vanish as a sensation of healing washed over them. In reality, the photos had been intentionally developed so that they would fade on exposure to light – but the effect, to a sick and desperate person, must have held great emotional power.

The mailer itself stops just short of claiming that the photos could heal, or even of telling the recipient how to use them (in this way, the Temple avoided outright mail fraud). It does, however, include a number of testimonies which explicitly explain that when the image was touched to a sick or injured body, the image disappeared and the body was healed. The testimonies provided both verisimilitude and deniability for the Temple.

Peoples Temple monthly newsletter, August 1974

We have no way of knowing how many photos were kept as personal mementoes, how many were discarded after they appeared to work (or not work), and how many were ignored, but we do know that many of the used photos were sent back to the Temple. Some were accompanied by brief testimonial letters, others only by notes scribbled on the envelopes, and others arrived with no writing at all, just a blank and silent image.

Today, the photos convey a strange sort of emptiness. Unlike most photos, they were never important for the images they carried, but for their power as objects. Ephemeral things are always emotionally powerful; think of the autumn leaf, or cherry blossom, that makes us feel both melancholy and buoyant. In the case of the photos, their creators designed them to self-destruct in order to give them a feeling of holiness. Now, however, that emotional power is spent. These empty sheets of photographic paper have no meaning left at all.

This leaves an archivist with a question. Do we hold on to these items? If objects from the past don’t speak, do they have a place in the library? Most people assume that an archivist’s job is to hold on to everything from the past, to take care of the past so that other people don’t have to think about it. (Witness the way the word “archive” is used in email and project management software – essentially, to mean “send this to a place that I’ll never see, but don’t delete it.”) In reality, archivists let things go all the time – and usually because they don’t bear information. Why would a librarian maintain a blank book?

The question isn’t quite as simple here, of course. These photos are more comparable to a large collection of empty, mass-produced blank books, like unused diaries. They’re poignant, but in ways that we may think we understand better than we do (we don’t know why the people in my example bought diaries, or why they never used them). There’s always a danger, in reading history, of filling in your own emotional context when there is none to be had.

In the end, we discarded many of the photos. We kept a substantial number of them, both to testify to their emotional resonance with Temple members and to preserve the information that some of them had written on their backs. But when it comes to conveying the vanishing of meaning, we’ve found that twenty blank pieces of paper are as powerful as a hundred.

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Written by Isaac R. Fellman, CHS's NHPRC Project Processing Archivist

The processing of this collection was made possible by funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).

Forty Years After Jonestown, Letting the Poisons Disperse

Archives are full of poisons. I used to work in the archives of a medical hospital where we kept a jar for making radium water, and where someone once casually sent my boss a bag of insulation pads dusty with old asbestos. But even without drugs and decaying industrial matter, many materials become dangerous as they age. Archivists can tell that old film is dangerously deteriorating by its distinctive smell of vinegar (actually corrosive acetic acid), and many plastics start to off-gas and turn brittle within a human lifetime.

The materials in the collection we’re processing right now—Peoples Temple photographs and documents—are no exception. Some photo negatives have turned acidic, and most of the rest are encased in fragile plastic which in the worst cases is permanently stuck to the images underneath.

We can avert this decay by putting the photos into new, safer plastic sleeves. This is how we will spend the first few weeks of our time with these twenty thousand images: carefully cutting apart brittle plastic to rescue the photos and give them safe homes.

In the context of the Peoples Temple, I see this as powerfully symbolic of what archivists do. We are removing the poison from the collection. We are making it safe for people to look at. Trauma is radioactive—it has a half-life—but by taking these slides from their rusted paperclips and decaying binders, we can clean up the damaged soil so that something can grow again.

Man and boy welding, Jonestown, circa 1977-1978], Photographs of Peoples Temple in the United States and Guyana, PC 010, California Historical Society.

What do I hope will grow? Personally, I hope that these images will present a broader image of the Temple than the usual tight focus on Jim Jones. These photographs were taken and compiled by the Temple’s Publications Department, so there’s quite a bit here that was intended to honor Jones, but they also show the rank upon rank of passionate, intelligent people who felt inspired by the Temple to be their best selves. Bus trips, ecstatic church services, the first joyous work on the utopian colony of Jonestown—these images show us Temple life outside of the rusty and jagged boundaries of Jones’ mind, even as he was already planning on some level for the ultimate act of control.

Many of the photos are of marginalized people, especially the African Americans who were inspired by the charged Temple atmosphere to build a new world in Guyana. The most familiar images of Jonestown are of corpses. In these images, we see living people, idealists who had stories to tell that weren’t about Jones, and who were able to empower themselves with the stories he told—about faith, about politics. 

Young Peoples Temple members resting on bus trip, possibly in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Photographs of Peoples Temple in the United States and Guyana, PC 010, California Historical Society 

He betrayed them, of course. He weaponized appropriation, he played on the despair of marginalized people but stole their hope for himself, and he talked without listening. What I hope to do, by rescuing these photos from their poisonous clothing, is to create an archive of images that reverses those sentences: “They were betrayed, of course. Their faith and their despair and their hope was stolen, was appropriated. They were spoken to and never listened to.” Reversing a sentence this way makes it less grammatical, but sometimes more honest. In the search for reparative justice, the object—the person who is made an object by another—is more important than the subject.

Let’s not forget Jones. We know what he thought about those who forget history; that was one of his late lucid moments. But let’s remember something bigger, something airier, something that lets the poison disperse into a more generous sky. Let’s remember Christine Miller, who passionately protested the killings at Jonestown, and who once faced down a gun-wielding Jones by saying, “You can shoot me, but you will respect me.” Let’s remember Ever Rejoicing, former follower of Father Divine, who lived for ninety-seven years before dying (not “only to die”) at Jonestown. Let’s remember the survivors—Monika Bagby, Christopher Keith O’Neal, Al and Jeannie Mills—who lived past 1978, but did not live long lives. And of course, let’s listen to the survivors who did, like Yulanda D.A. Williams, who electrified us on November 7th (when CHS hosted a panel discussion exploring the complex ways Peoples Temple was interconnected with and influenced by social, cultural, and political movements occurring at the time of its existence) with her testimony about cultism in America. Let’s listen to what the victims and the survivors have said. Let’s release the poison.

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This blog was written by Isaac R. Fellman, CHS's Project Archivist to the Peoples Temple collection

The processing of this collection was made possible by funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).