Archie “Jerome” Ijames was initially introduced to Peoples Temple and its leader Jim Jones in Indianapolis at a collaboration event in which local ministers in which each gave a special sermon for the audience (Reiterman, Raven). Born on September 1st, 1913 in Davie County, North Carolina, Ijames, who was raised in strict and unwavering faith was reluctant to receive Jones, his message, and his request to join Peoples Temple. This was due to the fact that he and his wife left organized religion to evade the racial disparities they faced within the religious community and through external forces as well (Reiterman, Raven). Archie became Jones effective “recruiter” of the initial African American/ minority following Jones first obtained, Ijames was a respected man within his community so his initial task was to spread the “word” on Jones so that more of the disenfranchised community flocked to him (Reiterman, Raven). Due to his pivotal position early on in the rise of the temple, Archie along with his family maintained a high-level status during their time in the community and Archie in specific was considered an assistant minister and pastor to Jim Jones (Q1057-4 Transcript).
Throughout the moves of the Temple across the country over the years, Archie was initially tasked with maintaining the Indianapolis operations, and then later joined Jones and the rest of the temple in California sometime later (Danesi, 2008). Jones made Ijames feel “wanted” (Reiterman, Raven) at first but as the movement circulated its way to and around California, Ijames began feeling abused, overworked, and attacked by Jones and the rest of the Caucasian “staff.”
By the time the Temple was ready to move to Guyana, Archie and his wife had great disdain towards Jones and the Temple due to the treatment they faced but were just too committed to leave their community behind (Danesi, 2008). In 1973 when the Temple first started establishing the Agricultural Project in Guyana, Archie was tasked with all of the start-up work of building the Temple in the jungle (Reiterman, Raven). By this time Jones and Archie’s relationship was openly bitter, and Jones was even said to have sabotaged Archie’s relationship with his wife as well as order an assassination “hit” on Ijames for being disobedient and not signing his Redwood house over to the Temple (Reiterman, Raven).
To officially end their stint with the Temple, Archie and his wife “left” after Archie was caught attempting to defect from the Guyana compound secretly with 45,000 dollars that belonged to the Temple. Archie and his wife did leave Guyana but as expected, they were too loyal to the cause and remained assisting the Temple at the San Francisco location until the mass suicide occurred sometime later (Danesi, 2008).
Ijames received a massive amount of media attention once the mass suicide occurred and died shortly after the 25th anniversary of the mass suicide some decades later (NC Culture, 2015).