The Peoples Temple Publications Department Records mainly consists of photographs created or collected by Peoples Temple members in order to support the Temple’s public relations efforts. The collection extensively documents Peoples Temple’s activism, particularly during the critical years of 1976 to 1978, and contains a wealth of imagery depicting the demonstrations, rallies, and events organized by Peoples Temple in support of prominent public officials, activists, and organizations. These photographs illuminate the connections between Peoples Temple and local, regional, national, and international political and activist networks, situating the Peoples Temple movement within the 1970s context of urban politics, radical activism, communalism, internationalism, and Black Power. As Peoples Temple was building its political connections and influence in California, a small group of settlers was establishing a cooperative colony in Guyana called the Peoples Temple Agricultural Mission, later known as Jonestown. In response to the publication of an exposé of Temple abuses and other pressures, nearly one thousand Peoples Temple members immigrated to Jonestown in the summer of 1977. The Publications Department Records provide the most extensive visual documentation of Jonestown extant, from the settlement’s establishment in 1974 to the penultimate days of 1978. Reflecting the public relations interests of the Publications Department, images of Jonestown present an interracial utopian agricultural society in the heart of the South American jungle. In addition to photographs, the collection contains forty-three film and video recordings of Peoples Temple in the United States and Guyana, thirty-eight of which have been digitized and made available online via the Internet Archive as part of the California Audiovisual Preservation Project. Also included are 46 audio recordings of Jim Jones’ sermons, amateur radio broadcasts from Jonestown, and commercial radio appearances by Temple members and associates.
