Jim Jones Accomplishments

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“To me death is not a fearful thing. It's living that's cursed.” Once said by the cult leader, James Warren Jones, commonly recognized as “Jim Jones.” A cult, by definition, is “a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.” Jones was born on May 13, 1931 in Crete, Indiana and went on to be a leader of a religious cult, the “People’s Temple.” He promised his followers a paradise, however, on the morning of November 18, 1978, the lives of nine hundred American people were taken under the hands of Jim Jones. This mass murder-suicide took place in Jonestown, Guyana. One of his personal achievements was conducting fake healing ceremonies and cheating his own cult members of …show more content…
Due to economic difficulties during the Great Depression, the Jones family was forced to move to Lynn Indiana. Due to his father injuring himself during the World War, it left him unable to work and to support the family (Cavendish, Richard). Not only was his father unemployed, but he was an alcoholic. As a child he was undoubtedly one of the poor of the community and was never accepted. Chuck Wilmore, was a childhood friend and neighbor of Jones, and he mentioned how Jones was “obsessed” with religion and death (Sociopaths Series: Jim Jones). They didn’t grow up as a wealthy family, and he didn’t have the same privileges as other children growing up, which led him to be isolated. He was viewed as an outsider due to his family's poverty issues. When Jones decided he wanted to start his own church with all of his followers, he needed to figure a way to make money. He sold imported monkeys as pets to people from door to door. June Cordell was a relative of a member from the People’s Temple, and the first time she had met Jim Jones was when she saw his advertisement in the Indianapolis Star for his sale of monkeys (Sociopaths Series: Jim Jones). When his parents separated, he decided to stay with his mother and move to Richmond,