[4][5] Jones's father was a disabled World War I veteran who suffered from severe breathing difficulties due to injuries which he sustained in a chemical weapons attack.

[10] When Jones started to attend school, his extended family threatened to cut off their financial assistance unless his mother got a job, forcing her to work outside her home.

[25] Jones regularly used offensive profanity, commonly greeting his friends and neighbors by saying, "Good morning, you son of a bitch" or "Hello, you dirty bastard",[24][26] similar to his mother Lynetta, who frequently swore in public and found amusement in people being offended at a woman cursing.

[55][59] Believing that the racially integrated and rapidly growing Latter Rain movement offered him a greater opportunity to become a preacher, Jones successfully convinced his wife to leave the Methodist church and join the Pentecostals.

Like Branham, Jones would later claim to be a return of Elijah the Prophet, the voice of God, a manifestation of Christ, and promote the belief that the end of the world was imminent.

[85] During his time as commission director, Jones helped to racially integrate churches, restaurants, the telephone company, the Indianapolis Police Department, a theater, and an amusement park, and the Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital.

[87] Jones set up sting operations in order to catch restaurants which refused to serve black customers[87] and wrote to American Nazi Party leaders and passed their responses to the media.

In January 1962 he read an Esquire magazine article that purported South America to be the safest place to reside to escape any impending nuclear war.

[128] While in the United States, Jones feared the public discovering the full extent of his communist views, which he worried would cost him the support of political leaders and risk Peoples Temple being ejected from the Disciples of Christ.

[133] The first known cases of serious abuse in Peoples Temple arose in California as the Planning Commission carried out discipline against members who were not fulfilling Jones's vision or following the rules.

[136] Members who rebelled against Jones's control were punished with reduced food rations, harsher work schedules, public ridicule and humiliations, and sometimes with physical violence.

[146] At that dinner, Willie Brown touted Jones as "what you should see every day when you look in the mirror" and said he was a combination of Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Davis, Albert Einstein, and Mao.

[147] Harvey Milk spoke to audiences during political rallies held at the Temple,[148] and he wrote to Jones after one such visit: Rev Jim, It may take me many a day to come back down from the high that I reach today.

[143][144] First Lady Rosalynn Carter met with Jones on multiple occasions, corresponded with him about Cuba, and spoke with him at the grand opening of the San Francisco headquarters—where he received louder applause than she did.

[160] On December 13, 1973, Jones was arrested and charged with lewd conduct for allegedly masturbating in the presence of a male undercover LAPD vice officer in a movie theater restroom near Los Angeles's MacArthur Park.

[168] Jones was put in charge of the project and oversaw the installation of a power generation station, clearance of fields for farming, and the construction of dormitories to prepare for the first settlers.

[179] Despite the negative press prior to his departure, Jones was still well respected outside of Peoples Temple for setting up a racially integrated church which helped the disadvantaged; 68% of Jonestown residents were black.

[182][183] This also comported with the Temple's practice of gradually subjecting its followers to sophisticated mind control and behavior modification techniques borrowed from Kim Il-sung's Korea and Mao Zedong's China.

[185] Jones's news readings usually portrayed the U.S. as a "capitalist" and "imperialist" villain, while casting "socialist" leaders, such as Kim Il Sung,[186] Robert Mugabe,[187] and Joseph Stalin[188] in a positive light.

[195] In the autumn of 1977, Timothy Stoen and other Temple defectors formed a "Concerned Relatives" group because they had family members in Jonestown who were not being permitted to return to the United States.

[196] Stoen traveled to Washington, D.C., in January 1978 to visit with State Department officials and members of Congress, and wrote a white paper detailing his grievances against Jones and the Temple and to attempt to recover his son.

[197] His efforts aroused the curiosity of California Congressman Leo Ryan, who wrote a letter on Stoen's behalf to Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham.

[212] Following two visits by United States Embassy personnel to check on the situation at Jonestown, and an IRS investigation in early 1978, Jones became increasingly convinced that the attack he feared was imminent.

[211][205] Through the White Nights, Jones convinced his followers that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was actively working to destroy their community and conditioned them to accept suicide as a means of escape.

[228] Marceline Jones announced on the public address system that everything was fine and urged locals to go back to their houses after Ryan left Jonestown for Port Kaituma.

[230] As members of Ryan's delegation boarded two planes at the Port Kaituma airstrip, Jonestown's Red Brigade of armed guards arrived and began shooting at them.

[232] At the same time, one of the supposed defectors, Larry Layton, drew a weapon and began firing on members of the party inside the other plane, a Cessna, which included Gosney and Bagby.

[249][245] Survivor Tim Carter has suggested that, like a previous practice, that day's lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches may have been tainted with sedatives to subdue members of the cult.

[250][242] Furthermore, in a 2007 interview with forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael H. Stone for the program Most Evil, Carter stated his belief that Jones had his guards pose the dead bodies of the Jonestown residents to make it appear that more people had willingly committed suicide.

[83] In the immediate aftermath, rumors arose that surviving members of Peoples Temple in San Francisco were organizing hit squads to target critics and enemies of the Church.