Former synagogue and Scottish Rite masonic temple purchased by Jim Jones as a headquarters for Peoples' Temple. (Jones' father was a leader in the KKK). The site was renovated after the 1906 San Francisco quake.

Because most of the People's Temple rank-and-file were black, and most of the leadership was white; Joyce Shaw, a former member, once mused that the mass suicide story was a cover-up for "some kind of horrible government experiments, or some sort of sick, racist thing. . .a plan like the Germans to exterminate blacks." 

Mayor George Moscone's former Housing Authority chairman, the Reverend Jim Jones, had fled town in advance of a series of stories damning his People's Temple. Politicians valued the Rev. Jones because he could reliably turn out pool of precinct canvassers. What they did not realize was that these "volunteers" were slave labor. The People's Temple tortured dissidents. Moscone, along with Supervisor Harvey Milk, were about to blow the lid off the CIA mind control experiments days before his murder at the hands of Dan White