Some families of victims of the Jonestown massacre are opposing plans to include the name of People’s Temple leader, Jim Jones in the Oakland memorial to the victims of the 1978 mass suicide by the cult in Guyana.
Jones led his followers to mass suicide on November 18, 1978 via cyanide-laced Kool Aid after a visit by US Congressman Leo Ryan to investigate conditions there. Ryan and others were shot to death and more than 900 others died after drinking the Kool Aid.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that a group of victims’ families have upped their fight to stop a planned memorial that would include Jones’ name among the massacre victims.
It said that Jynona Norwood, who lost 27 relatives in the tragedy, led a sombre rally and vigil at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California where 406 of Jonestown’s nearly 1,000 victims were interred in a mass grave.
About 20 people attended, in hopes of pressuring the cemetery to scupper a memorial by another group of relatives and install theirs instead. Norwood’s memorial would include the names of 305 children who died at Jonestown. Neither Jones nor any other adult’s name would be listed.
“We’re demanding that Evergreen Cemetery not add the name of the executioner,” Norwood said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “Would they tell the Jewish community to put the name of Hitler on a Holocaust memorial? It’s insulting.”
On Nov. 18, 1978, Jones ordered his followers in the People’s Temple to drink cyanide-laced punch. Several others, including Rep. Leo Ryan, were shot and killed the same day when they arrived to investigate what families described as a cult.
Norwood’s group has been gathering money for about 12 years to erect a memorial at Evergreen, where the only marker now is a simple flat stone that reads, “In Memory of the Victims of the Jonestown Tragedy, Nov. 18, 1978.”
Norwood’s memorial originally was planned to be seven 7-foot-tall slabs of black granite standing upright, inscribed with the names of 917 victims. Jones’ name would not be included.
But the project was down-sized due to the US$90,000 cost and the difficulties of installing such massive structures on an unstable hillside, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Norwood’s group has already paid US$30,000 to the memorial maker.
Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory was among those at Monday’s event.
“This has become a tragedy within a tragedy,” he said, according to the report. “But now it’s about the children. Those children never got to reach adulthood, and we need to remember them.”
Norwood’s may however come to naught. Evergreen and a second group of survivors, led in part by Jones’ son, Jim Jones Jr., are pushing ahead with a US$15,000 memorial they expect to install by the tragedy’s 33rd anniversary, Nov. 18.
The memorial is four flat granite plaques that match the existing marker. It would have 918 names, including Jones.
“If we left off Jones’ name, we’d be giving him an awful lot of power,” said Fielding McGehee III, who lost several relatives at Guyana and is now head of the Jonestown Institute at San Diego State University. “Let’s recognize his culpability, but let’s also recognize his death”, he said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Jones was not the only one to blame for the massacre, McGehee contended. He said that many others helped coordinate the deaths, from ordering the poison to shooting Ryan on the nearby tarmac.
“It really is hard to draw a line if we’re trying to define responsibility,” McGehee said. “Where does it stop?”
The second group decided to organize its own efforts because of the delays in installing Norwood’s memorial – or any memorial – at Evergreen. Former People’s Temple residents and victims’ families are getting older, and many are eager to see a permanent marker, McGehee said.
The San Francisco Chronicle said that the Evergreen staff appear ready to install the memorial proposed by McGehee’s group. The cemetery, Amador Memorial in Oakland and McGehee’s group have collaborated on the design and feasibility, and the $15,000 has already been raised and spent.
“Norwood’s group is now No. 2,” said cemetery director Ron Haulman. “Right now, I can’t do anything with her memorial because she has never presented us with a formal proposal.”
Norwood, according to the report, said she has had informal talks for years with Evergreen staff, but hasn’t moved ahead with detailed plans because she was waiting to raise the full US$90,000.
“This has been horrific for me,” she said. “This has been like a second Jonestown”, she said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
