User:Rev. Stanley Williams

I was born during the Great Depression, the only son of James Thurmond Jones and Lynette Jones (neé Putnam). MY father was an alcoholic Klansman and he claimed MY mother was part Cherokee Indian. I spent most of my formative years in conservative rural Indiana. MY father struggled to earn a living as a mystic fortune teller. MY parents separated in 1948 and I went to live with my mother in Richmond, Indiana. i also worked as an orderly at a local hospital. I got married young, to a nurse 4 years his senior, and adopted 3 children of diverse ethnic backgrounds.

I began working as a Methodist minister in Indianapolis in the early 50s. In 1954, when I met God on a train ride near Philadelphia, I was defrocked. The charismatic leader then founded his own gathering - the Community National Unity Church. By 1955 I had renamed it the People's Temple Full Gospel Church. I set up a soup kitchen, gave away groceries and clothes to the poor, and established two nursing homes, while preaching messages of apostolic socialism and racial equality. Secretly, I also joined the Communist party on the side. I was appointed director of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission in 1961. I began a dubious path as a "spiritual healer" by planting actors among his believers and miraculously 'healing' them. I was getting richer and more popular.

I received several humanitarian awards in Northern California for my work with the poor.