CRIES OF THE PEOPLE'S TEMPLE

Thirty years ago Jim Jones - the preacher who led the People's Temple - ordered 919 of his followers to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. I've always been fascinated by how an apparently happy, racially integrated, progressive community living in a tropical paradise so rapidy descended into an evil suicide cult. Here are two audio clips that kinda show that terrible dichotomy...

Here's a great track from He's Able, a gospel album recorded by the People's Temple Choir.
Listen: People's Temple - "Something Got A Hold Of Me"



Here's a recording of the debate that went on in Jonestown as the congregation killed themselves at the urging of their drugged-up, slurring leader.
Listen: Jonestown Death Tape



For some background watch this documentary: The Life And Death Of People's Temple

5 comments:

JIRO said...

I've never had Kool Aid before.

babycrow said...

this sounds like colonel kurtz 'horror' speech.

iowa-girl-in-korea said...

The second tape freaks me out.

John said...

DIPSET, BICTH!!!!!

Anonymous said...

from Wikipedia: "Kool-Aid was invented by Edwin Perkins and his wife Kitty in Hastings, Nebraska, USA. Its predecessor was a liquid concentrate called Fruit Smack. To reduce shipping costs, in 1927, Perkins discovered a way to remove the liquid from Fruit Smack, leaving only a powder."