Climbing the Hill

Remembering Jonestown close to home.

By Matt Dribble

On a hillside in East Oakland, a modest slab of granite bears the words “Jonestown, Guyana.” No names appear on the marker, but 406 of the 914 people who lost their lives in the infamous murder-suicide on Nov. 18, 1978 are buried here at Evergreen Cemetery (6459 Camden Ave.). Each year on the anniversary, Jonestown survivors and family members of the victims gather to sing, pray and remember.

The Rev. Jynona Norwood has made the pilgrimage from Los Angeles today, as she has every year since 1979. Jonestown was a horrific disaster by anyone’s standards, but the loss to the Rev. Norwood is beyond comprehension: She lost 27 relatives, including her mother, aunt and numerous cousins. In the aftermath of the tragedy, she saw her role clearly: To speak for those whose voices had been silenced. “I made a vow to my mother, and my little cousins, and friends that until I take my last breath, I would be on this hill telling their story,” says Norwood. Almost singlehandedly, she has kept the anniversary gatherings going, despite sparse attendance in the early years.

As people arrive, there are flashes of recognition, hugs and tears, as some reconnect for the first time in nearly three decades. One notices an initial wariness toward newcomers, natural among those who have suffered unexplainable loss and endured years of misunderstanding, guilt and fear.

Tim Carter is attending the memorial service for the first time this year. He was living at Jonestown but was away on an errand when the distribution of the poison began. He returned in time to see a cup of the liquid poured down the throat of his young son. “My wife and son are here,” he says, glancing at the ground where we are standing. Carter recounts how for several months, no cemetery would agree to take the hundreds of unclaimed bodies returned from Guyana. “They were all afraid of attracting hordes of ‘cultists’.”

For many Americans, Jonestown is a distant, nightmarish image of deranged cult members run amok in a jungle thousands of miles away. But in the Bay Area, the impact hit home, and the aftershocks still reverberate. Before Jim Jones ordered all members to relocate to Guyana, the People’s Temple church was based in San Francisco—and was well-respected and politically connected. Emerging out of the counter-cultural ashes of the ’60s, Jones and the church offered the promise of an integrated, egalitarian community to idealistic young whites and hundreds of African Americans—many of them from Oakland—seeking refuge from the scourges of racism and poverty.

Tim Stoen, now a deputy district attorney for Humboldt County, was a Temple member and served as Jim Jones’ attorney. “You are never going to find more altruistic, kindly people,” he tells the assembled group. “To this day I have not found racial integration as beautiful as I found in the Temple. The problem is that because there was so much altruism in the body and so much evil at the top, people can’t get a fix on the story.”

In recent years the memorial gathering has grown, and more survivors are emerging to speak about their experiences. The play The People’s Temple, which debuted in 2005 at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, uses dialogue taken directly from interviews with survivors and archival material. The play focuses on the humanity and utopian goals of the members as well as the instability of Jones, and many survivors feel that this is the first time the events have been realistically portrayed. There is also a survivor newsletter, an excellent Web site hosted by San Diego State and the ongoing archival work of the California Historical Society, all of which have helped a more accurate picture of the Temple emerge.

Toward the end of the service, a large African-American man rises to speak. Stanley Clayton introduces himself as one of the few survivors who witnessed the deaths at Jonestown that day. “That was a very, very dark day. Even though I stand here, I’m really there today.” Clayton describes how a young man ran to him and collapsed in his arms before dying. His wife also died that day. “For all these 27 years I didn’t come out, because I was very disturbed by what happened.”

The Rev. Norwood would like to see a memorial wall built, similar in design to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, listing all the names of the dead. She has the support of luminaries like Maya Angelou and dozens of politicians and religious leaders, but the project is still struggling to find funding. To date, her family members are the only people memorialized by name at the site, on a small marker near the Jonestown stone. As she kneels to place 27 carnations, she says, “For some of us, this is the most challenging and bewildering day of the year—wanting to know why this has happened to a loving group of grandfathers, grandmothers, parents and children. We walk daily with our loved ones and who they could have become.”

For more information on the People’s Temple, check out www.jonestown.sdsu.edu or www.jones-town.org.

E-mail Matt Dibble at beingthere@oaklandmagazine.com.