City monument sought to honor black victims of Jonestown

San Francisco historian John Templeton called a meeting Saturday to discuss African Americans in city policy, touching on the declining influence of a group whose population has dramatically dwindled.

Nine people showed up. Including the speaker.

It reflected the exodus of African Americans from the costly city and the struggle of a handful of elder community leaders to rebuild a group with a rich history in San Francisco.

James Taylor, a professor of political science at the University of San Francisco, gave a talk at the New Liberation Presbyterian Church in the Western Addition, focusing on what he said is the forgotten black history surrounding the 1978 Jonestown massacre.

He drew parallels between the current African American departure from San Francisco and the mass murder-suicide in Guyana that killed more than 900 people — the majority of them black Bay Area residents who were following Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple.

Pressure should be put on acting Mayor London Breed to install a monument to remember those killed, Taylor said. The Jonestown massacre became a taboo subject in the city, not only because of the loss of hundreds of lives, but also because of the subsequent political embarrassment. Before the tragedy, politicians who supported cult leader Jones ranged from Gov. Jerry Brown to former Mayor Willie Brown, now a Chronicle columnist.

“The erasure of Jonestown to me ... the erasure of the black people in Jonestown is not unrelated to the failures of the city of San Francisco,” Taylor said. “It also has to do with the black outmigration right now.”

“As much as Jim Jones represented a real, deep evil, even without Jim Jones, the black community is still being erased.”

November marked 39 years since Jones ordered his followers to kill themselves by taking cyanide mixed with a sweet purple drink, forcing those who refused. The deadly event followed a visit by Rep. Leo Ryan, D-San Mateo, who went to Guyana to investigate the settlement but was shot by temple gunmen when he tried to leave.

Among those shot and killed with Ryan were NBC photographer Robert Brown and reporter Don Harris, San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson and Patricia Parks, a temple member who wanted to leave. Jackie Speier, an aide to Ryan who now holds his seat in Congress, was severely wounded.

The massacre has stayed with Yulanda Williams, now a lieutenant with the San Francisco Police Department, for years. As she listened to Taylor speak, she also called for a monument to be set up.

Williams had been a member of the church and left the settlement with her family before violence broke out, she said. The ordeal became “something to hide and deny,” she said, and soon it wasn’t discussed much in the city.

“When we first got back from Guyana, people said they could not understand how black people could be so foolish,” Williams said. “They made the survivors feel as though they were unintelligent.”

She suggested that a monument be placed at the post office in the 1800 block of Geary Boulevard — the former Peoples Temple site.

“Nine hundred people lost their lives, and we don’t even have a monument or statue or anything,” she said. “There should be a day of remembrance.” The discussion became more heated as the group — many of whom lost friends in the massacre — debated Jones’ role as a leader, the role of the black movements of the ’60s and ’70s, and asked “How did they get caught up in some madness like that?”

Templeton, the historian who had organized the meeting, smiled quietly.

“What this conversation is showing is it’s a conversation that needed to happen for a long time,” he said.

“Nine hundred people lost their lives, and we don’t even have a monument or statue or anything. There should be a day of remembrance.” Yulanda Williams, SFPD lieutenant and Jonestown survivor