Jim Jones and the Civil Rights Movement

In 1954, two years before the Supreme Court had ruled on Brown versus the Board of Education against segregation in schools. Now Jim is still only 26 years old in 1957. He was coming into his own just as this battle was getting underway and he wanted to open a front in Indianapolis. Because of his increased profile, his church was growing, but it was also changing. Whereas his little community unity storefront was majority black, his expanding people's temple was now majority white. Some came over from a cross town Pentecostal church to which Jim had been invited as a guest preacher. In several of the church's white members left with him to people's temple.