On November 18, 1978, over 900 Americans died in the jungle in Guyana after drinking a cyanide-laced fruit drink at the behest of their leader, the Reverend Jim Jones. It is one of the largest mass death events in American history , and has become so ingrained in popular culture that “drinking the Kool-Aid” has become an idiom for belief in any dangerous ideology. In a new documentary about that fateful day, Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown , Jones’s son Stephan Jones argues that the phrase shifts the blame away from where it truly belongs.
“That night was murder,” he says. The new three-part documentary, from director Marian Mohamed, explores the events that led up to that horrendous day in November through the eyes of some of those who survived. As well as Stephan, who was in Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, when the killing began.
There are also new interviews with Yulanda Williams, who was a follower of Jones’s group The Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, and former Congresswoman Jackie Speier who accompanied her then-boss Leo Ryan to investigate Jonestown and survived five gunshot wounds when Ryan was assassinated as they tried to leave. The roots of the tragedy date back to 1955, when Jones first formed The Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, Indiana. He preached a message of social justice and racial integration that was radical for the time.
When he adopted a Black child and gave him his own name, Jim Jones Jr became the first African-American child .
