Cult City by Daniel J. Flynn

Author:Daniel J. Flynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ORD)
Published: 2018-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

Peoples Temple held a moment of silence to honor the passing of Harvey Milk’s companion.

“They lived together in a respectable homosexual relationship,” Jim Jones announced in the steamy Jonestown pavilion in Guyana. He explained that Lira had ended his life not because of alcoholism, relationship troubles, or deep-seated familial trauma but because he feared, like Jones, that a holocaust would soon consume blacks, gays, and other minorities in the United States as it did Jews in the Third Reich. “Harvey Milk has been one of our deepest supporters,” Jones noted. He instructed, “We want to send a lot of letters.”36

En masse and on script, the congregation sent a lot of letters.

“I had the opportunity in S.F. when we were there to get to know you and thought very highly of your commitment to social action and to the betterment of the community,” Sharon Amos, the Temple’s liaison to Milk’s 1976 Assembly campaign, wrote from the group’s Georgetown, Guyana, outpost. “You have always been willing to put yourself out for us and so you’ve been a true and faithful friend. I am deeply sorrowed at your loss!” She encouraged Milk to recover in Jonestown, where “there is no racism, sexism, ageism or elitism,” and boasted of hoped-for future visits by Dick Gregory and Muhammad Ali.37

“Many times I sat and listened to your words from the pulpit at Peoples Temple in San Francisco,” Mary Lou Clancey, a doe-eyed, brunette beauty, wrote to Milk. “You have proven yourself as a strong and true friend over the last couple years, good friends are close to our heart.” She encouraged a visit by describing Jonestown as “All races, ages and social backgrounds blending, sharing, living equality. The best of medical care, spacious clean housing, healthy nutritious meals comprised of home-grown vegetables and tropical fruits not to forget farm-raised chicken & pork and sea-fish that comes from our boat. If it sounds too good to be true … you will have to come see for yourself.”38

Milk received precisely fifty such condolence letters from Jonestown, forty-nine of which called on Milk to visit the commune. Most offered strangely similar boasts about the delicious food and Edenic living conditions. The letters all noted Milk’s loyalty to the Temple. Several misspelled “Milke” in the same peculiar manner.

The final journal entry of one correspondent more directly pointed to orchestration. Edith Roller noted in her diary that Carolyn Looman, a San Francisco Head Start administrator turned Peoples Temple honcho, asked her to write to Milk.39 Roller’s letter followed the script. “I understand that you may be coming to live with us here,” she explained to the grieving city supervisor, “and I wish to encourage you and say how much we would like to have you here.”40

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