The events were sparked by the assassination of California Congressman Leo Ryan, who was there to investigate complaints after the group moved from San Francisco. But like many aspects of the Jonestown tragedy, its details have been changed in the popular imagination. In fact, the group didn’t drink Kool-Aid; instead, they drank a British version of the popular sugary American drink. And not everyone committed suicide. At least some tried to flee the scene, only to be shot by Jones’ henchmen.
At the time, the massacre shook the world. It was blamed on Jones’s charismatic hold on the cult. The tragedy involved a racially-integrated community, a rarity in American life at the time, composed of both African Americans and whites. Back in Indiana, Jones was a white Christian preacher who claimed allegiance to the civil rights struggles of African Americans in the 1960s and ’70s. The People’s Temple relocated from Indianapolis to San Francisco before emigrating to Guyana en masse, and in some quarters the tragedy was blamed on California quirkiness.