A Guyanese Tragedy

On my recent shopping trip to New York City, I was browsing one of the Borders book stores and came across the '101 Most Infamous Criminals in U.S. History' section. I was kind of blown away by the reference to Rev. Jim Jones Sr. and the Guyanese tragedy which happened 29 years ago this month. Having visited the South American home of my parents for the second time this year, I still find it hard to comprehend how my country is linked to one of the worst massacres ever. Even more remarkable is the role basketball played in saving a few lucky young men who survived.

In the mid-1970s the charismatic, and manipulative Jones landed in San Francisco, where he used social activism, radicalized rhetoric and elements of old-time religion, like purported acts of faith healing, to whip the multicultural congregation of Peoples Temple into a fervor.

Jones later became a political force in San Francisco politics. Yet when questions were raised about abuses within his Peoples Temple church, he moved his flock to South America and created a would-be utopia, Jonestown, in the jungles of Guyana.

Jonestown was accessible only by boat or plane, so a basketball hoop was erected in the encampment, built on a platform floor in a place originally intended to be a storehouse. For the young men who played there, the game became a kind of organized defiance against the Rev. Jones.

In the late summer of 1978, Jim Jones Jr., then 18, was dispatched to the capital city Georgetown where he would spend three months helping set up basketball initiatives. It was a good PR exercise for Jonestown, and it was a way for some of the young men to play ball. The Jones teams played a number of tournament games, totally oblivious to what was happening in the jungle.

Unbeknown to them back in Jonestown, a cyanide-laced Flavor Aid drink was being prepared and would ultimately be responsible for the death of more than 900 men, women and children in a mass suicide orchestrated by the Rev. Jim Jones also died from a gunshot wound.

Playing basketball had kept the players on the team away from the horror. It saved their lives.