Hugh Manatee Wins » Sun Jan 21, 2007 9:32 pm wrote:I've looked into this white Jim Jones phenomenon as much as one can on the internet.
But I just found out there was another Prophet Jones or James F. Jones who was a black cult leader out of Detroit in the 1940s-1950s. He was profiled in Life and Time Magazines in 1953 for his ostentatious displays of wealth and eventually jailed for being "queer" which ended his reign.
I wonder whether he was used to discredit the civil rights movement or just blacks generally. After all, Time Magazine was under the CIA's control like many other mainstream publications. The COINTELPRO attacks on Nation of Islam and Malcolm X were beginning right around the time the Prophet Jones was taken down in 1956.
I also wonder if this first James Jones gave someone the idea for the second one or if the first one helped bring in followers who had heard of a Jim Jones in the black community.
Cults are show biz. There's always some audience for human spectacle.
The white Jim Jones was also reported by survivors of the People's Temple to be using his male followers for anal sex along with womanizing.
http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/access.cgi?uri=/journals/journal_of_lesbian_and_gay_studies/v008/8.3retzloff.htmlRetzloff, Tim ""Seer or Queer?" Postwar Fascination with Detroit's Prophet Jones"
GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies - Volume 8, Number 3, 2002, pp. 271-296
Duke University Press
Excerpt
Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., writing in the November 1951 issue of Ebony, began an article about the need for sex education in the African American church with a story about an unidentified pastor's grief at the death of his handsome, talented young male assistant. In describing the funeral, Powell stressed the preacher's quavering voice, his tear-soaked eyes, his shaking body, and his attempt to leap into the grave with the coffin. "The minister's broken sobs sounded as if they had been wrung from the tragedy-twisted heart of one who has lost his lover," Powell wrote. He then played his narrative trump: "Actually, the two had been sharing an unnatural relationship for a number of years. The entire congregation knew about it. The whole community knew about it—and yet, that minister was and is today one of the most powerful and 'respected' Negro pastors in all America." 1 Falling within the purview of Powell's attack on "a tiny minority of degenerate ministers," and the likely focus of his wrath, was Prophet James Francis Jones of Detroit.
Prophet Jones, or, as some accounts said he preferred, "His Holiness the Rt. Rev. Dr. James F. Jones, D.D., Universal Dominion Ruler, Internationally Known as Prophet Jones," drew national attention for his extravagance and flamboyance during the 1940s and 1950s. His antics, fanciful teachings, and immoderate lifestyle were noted in Time and Newsweek. Life profiled him as one of the most prosperous evangelists in the country. The Saturday Evening Post dubbed him the "Messiah in Mink." Such exposure made Jones one of the most visible, if most curious, African Americans in the white-controlled mass media during the Truman and Eisenhower years. 2
The self-styled preacher's rise to prominence was partly due to a strong homosexual subtext. His congregation and his community knew about, or at least suspected, his same-sex desire....
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,822636,00.html
http://info.detnews.com/history/story/index.cfm?id=182&category=people
Jones dedicated Thursdays to dispensing solutions to personal problems of health, love and business. To a citizen with an ulcer, for example, he would say, "I adjust your stomach. It is adjusted." Citizens wishing to pose their personal problems privately whispered them in the prophet's ear. He allotted each petitioner one minute's time, for a fee of ten dollars. On a busy Thursday his intake often reached $4,000.
Jones had ingenious ways of raising money. When a photograph of him appeared in the old Detroit Tribune, which sold for ten cents, he bought up hundreds of copies, reselling them to his congregation for five dollars a copy citing their "miraculous curative" properties. Rumor had it that Jones also dispensed lucky numbers to some of his followers for a fee, who then played them with numbers racketeers who often hung around outside the church.
Jones claimed to be the embodiment of the Savior. Many blacks and some whites believed fervently in his divinity. They expressed their adoration by lavishing him with costly gifts: a five-carat, $10,000 topaz ring, a $6,000 diamond bracelet watch, a $17,000 bracelet with 812 diamonds. A $13,500 mink coat was given to him in 1953 by two Chicago school teachers, who credited Jones with curing their sick mother.
When he traveled to New York in 1954 he rode in a Cadillac, carried a gold-handled cane and was accompanied by four valets, four bodyguards, three secretaries, a cook, a dietitian, a housekeeper, a hairdresser, three musicians and 60 singers.
No one ever knew what the prophet's actual earnings were. He regularly filed income tax returns claiming income of less than $5,000 yearly. His sect was chartered under state law as a nonprofit corporation and the money taken in was presumed spent on organizational expenses only, making it tax exempt
The prophet's popularity diminished in 1956 after he was accused of gross indecency. Although he was acquitted in Detroit's Recorder's Court, his influence waned, and he moved to Chicago, commuting between the two cities.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,890676,00.html9/21/1953
In due time, the word came to Father Divine, self-proclaimed God-in-the-flesh: Philadelphia was going to have a visitation by Detroit's Prophet Jones, Dominion Ruler of the Church of the Universal Triumph, who has established a lien on divinity himself. Forth from Father Divine's headquarters in Philadelphia went a cordial invitation: Would the Prophet attend the consecration of the Father's new 73-acre heaven in swank suburban Montgomery County?
Prompt and courtly was the Prophet Jones's reply: "Your Godliness ... I ... know the chassis of your mind has been carried up into a divine cosmic lubritorium. I herewith graciously, humbly and sincerely, yet royally, accept your invitation to attend."
A Peach & a Pear. One morning last week, the North Philadelphia station looked like five minutes to Judgment Day as some 1,500 happy and expectant followers of the two leaders waited for the Pennsylvania Railroad's Red Arrow bearing the Prophet. When it arrived, things nearly got out of hand.
First came Prophet Jones's 26 pieces of luggage, containing some of his 400 suits and his $12,900 white mink coat (TIME, March 2). Then, with an entourage including two valets, two secretaries, a hairdresser, two bodyguards and a cook, came Prophet James F. Jones himself. When about 15 yards separated him from Father Divine and his blonde wife, Mother Divine (in a mink jacket and orchid corsage), the ecstatic faithful piled in around them, crying, "Peace, peace—it's wonderful, wonderful!" A long-armed policeman was helpless to restore order. Then Father Divine raised his arm. "Peace, kindly move back." he said, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea.
