The_c.o.w.s.

The Katherine Massey Book Club @ The C.O.W.S. hosts the fourth study session on Michael Meiers' Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment. This infamous mass murder has countless parallels to our recent literary selections - Columbine, Michael Swango, and The Hart murder-suicide. The Rev. Jim Jones, a White man born in Indiana, took a thousand people from California to Guyana, South America. On November 18th, 1978, Jones killed nearly all 1,000 of his mostly black followers and Congressman Leo Ryan. A few were shot, but most were poisoned with cyanide, just like "Double-0 Swango." For nearly half a century, this event has been conventionally understood as a bunch of brainwashed black loons following a White charlatan to their demise in the jungle. Meiers' work suggests something far more nefarious. Last week, we learned about Jones' Indiana roots - including his Klu Klux Klan father. The Jones Klan lived in a number of Racially Restricted Regions within the Hoosier state - and Meiers highlights that Jones was po