Death of dreams: in November 1978, Harvey Milk's murder and the mass suicides at Jonestown nearly broke San Francisco's spirit. Eerily, Milk knew and worked with Jonestown founder Jim Jones.

"Horror upon horror, shock upon shock.... What is there about November? What is there about San Francisco?" So declaimed local journalist Herb Caen just one day after the November 27, 1978, murders of openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.

Twenty-five years later, most gay men and lesbians have beard the story of Milk's rise to national prominence as one of the first openly gay lawmakers in the country. And most have heard about how the murders of Milk and Moscone east a shadow over a previously optimistic and seemingly carefree San Francisco, But many people don't realize that the murders were the second tragedy to strike the city in as many weeks.

Only nine days earlier, a local religious and civic leader named Jim Jones led more than 900 people--most of them San Franciscans--to kill themselves and each other. The deaths took place in ,Jonestown, a communal settlement in the South American country of Guyana, built by members of Jones's San Francisco-based Peoples Temple.

Together, these events dealt a tremendous blow to San Francisco's turbulent and ongoing attempt to make itself a beacon of social, political, and sexual freedom. "It felt like the world was imploding," says Brian Freeman, a gay man who had just moved to San Francisco from Boston at the time. "It marked the end of the utopian ideal for the Bay Area." In tandem, the two events became regarded as an "only in San Francisco" story. And that made sense to most Americans--regardless of their political affiliation-because only a city that had reached so high could fall so far.

San Francisco was a national leader in progressive polities, with a liberal political coalition represented by Moscone, a gay rights movement championed by Milk, and an experiment in multiracial community forged, in large part, by Peoples Temple. The city had been a focal point for cultural and political change throughout the preceding decade--the area was home to hippies, the free speech movement, the Black Panthers, and tens of thousands of gay people who migrated there throughout the 1970s.

"Gay people were organizing as a visible, powerful force ... at the center of rebuilding a city that had been abandoned by longtime residents and their adult children," says Jim Rivaldo, a political consultant and associate of Milk's "Every day you had a sense that this had never been done."

A similar, if more weary, sense of optimism existed in Peoples Temple, a ministry for the urban poor, headquartered in the city's economically depressed Fillmore district, hi the 1960s and early '70s the Fillmore trod been radically altered by urban renewal, which community activists such as Arnold Townsend derided as "Negro removal." Peoples Temple--a congregation loosely affiliated with the Disciples of Christ denomination--countered that, offering the neighborhood a social justice agenda, housing and drug rehabilitation programs, and political influence.

Jones, the temple's white founder and pastor, presided over the predominantly African-American congregation. And thousands joined its ranks. The temple was outspoken, if not active, in support of various progressive causes and political campaigns, including Moscone's and Milk's. Once elected mayor, Moscone rewarded Jones for his support by appointing him head of the city's housing authority.

Milk was of two minds about the temple. He accepted temple members' help in his successful 1977 campaign for board of supervisors--which made him one of the first openly gay elected officials in the country and certainly the most popular. But he also reportedly said temple members were "weird and dangerous."

He was not alone in this assessment. As the temple grew in size and status, Jones faced increasing scrutiny from the press, which investigated reports of "suicide drills," physical and sexual abuse, and extortion. In August 1977 the San Francisco Examiner published a damning two-part investigation on its front page. The stories were headlined, "Rev. Jones: The Power Broker, Political Maneuverings of a Preacher Man," and "The Temple, a Nightmare World."

Under pressure, Jones and some 1,000 followers started moving to Jonestown in late 1977. A settlement in the Guyana jungle, Jonestown was promoted as a multiracial socialist paradise far from the racism and class oppression of American life. Many hundreds more temple members stayed in San Francisco, where services continued under the leadership of associate pastors. Milk spoke at a service for the last time in October 1978. He had been enthusiastically received at Peoples Temple several times before, and he always sent glowing thank-yon notes to Jones afterward.

After one visit, Milk wrote, "Rev. Jim, It may Lake me many a day to come back down from the high that I reach today. I found something deal" today. I found a sense of being that makes up for all the hours mad energy, placed in a fight. I found what you wanted me to find. I shall be back. For I can never leave." Milk may have been disingenuous in his praise, or perhaps the rousing services at Peoples Temple made him feel a genuine bond.

Rivaldo, who attended meetings at Peoples Temple with Milk, says that until Jonestown the church "was a community of people who appeared to be looking out for each other, improving their lives." Yet after the later meetings he and Milk agreed that. "there was something creepy about it," he says.

Milk, however, remained popular among temple members, as litany demonstrated in 1978 when they wrote oddly formulaic letters of condolence to the supervisor after his boyfriend committed suicide. One typical letter ended, "You have our deepest sympathy in your loss and we would be glad to have you with us [in Jonestown], even for only a short visit."

Such was the state of affairs between the temple and Milk as he rose to the podium to address the crowd ha October 1978. Milk was campaigning against Proposition 6, a statewide ballot initiative that would have barred gay people from teaching in public schools.

The campaign against the proposition galvanized the city's gay and lesbian residents, says Gwenn Craig, who was cochair of the local No on 6 effort. "Other cities had repealed their gay rights ordinances," Craig says, citing Anita Bryant's successful antigay crusade in Dade County, Fla., the year before. "But in San Francisco we had a mayor who had endorsed and signed a gay rights ordinance that Harvey Milk had drafted. There was a sense that if you did the work, good things would happen."

And they did happen. On November 7, Proposition 6 was handily defeated. "We were elated," says Craig, who also recalls the huge operation of blowing up balloons at a local bar for that night's victory celebration. The city's recently formed gay marching band came into the bar playing the city's unofficial anthem, San Francisco," whose lyrics proclaim, "open your golden gate / You'll let no stranger wait outside your door."

Milk's polities seemed to echo that sentiment. "He thought everybody should have a place at the table," Craig says. Community activist Townsend agrees: "This was a time when coalition politics were strong. Harvey Milk and George Moscone both believed in allying with other communities and supporting their issues."

The elation on the part of San Francisco's gays and lesbians, however, was juxtaposed with a deep sense of unease developing among many relatives of Jonestown residents. They implored a local congressman to investigate living conditions at the commune. And in mid November, Rep. Leo Ryan led a delegation of journalists and concerned relatives to Jonestown. And there is little doubt he would have issued a disturbing report upon returning to the United States. He invited any Jonestown resident who wanted to leave the compound to return back to the United States with him, and 16 accepted. But Jones dispatched guards to ambush rite departing delegation, killing Ryan and four others as they boarded a plane to leave.

Later that day, November 18, Jonestown residents began their mass murder-suicide by cyanide poisoning. Jones convinced them that it was a "revolutionary" response to an tin just world that persecuted them.

Two days later the headlines in San Francisco blared, "400 Stood in lane to Die." The death toll rose to 700 by week's end and to 912 by final count. Relatives lost any hope that their loved ones had escaped the carnage. Seventy percent of those who died in Jonestown were African-American, and most of them were from the Bay Area.

"Between urban renewal and Jonestown, the most progressive black community in the United States--the Fillmore--was destroyed," Townsend says.

The magnitude of the tragedy sickened Moscone, who reportedly vomited upon hearing of the deaths. But the mayor, along with other local politicians who had spoken hi favor of Peoples Temple in previous years, denied any culpability in the tragedy. "It's clear that if there was a sinister plan, we were taken in," Moscone said. "But I'm not taking any responsibility. It's not mine to shoulder."

That same week rumors were flying that Jones had hired hit squads to kill political enemies back in the United States. Moscone beefed up security at City Hall--but those measures didn't make a difference Monday, November 27. That morning, with the city still reeling from the aftershocks of Jonestown, disgruntled former city supervisor Dan White sneaked into the building through a basement window and proceeded to shoot and kill Moscone, then Milk. White, who cast the only vote against Milk's gay rights ordinance, had resigned from the board of supervisors just three weeks before the murders. Five days later he asked to have his job back. Milk, however, lobbied against reinstating him, and Moscone decided to appoint someone else to the post.

"What was particularly shocking was that it happened in City Hall," says Rinaldo, who was among those who found Milk lying on his office floor after the shooting. "This was a highly secure place; it was a refuge. And yet this horrible thing happened fight here."

That night, an estimated 30,000 people took part in a candlelight march down Market Street, from the Castro district that Milk had represented to City Hall, where Moscone had made his political home. Thousands of candles dotted the otherwise darkened street, both lighting the way and showing faces filled with despair. "What's the use if this is what happens when you try to effect social change?" Townsend says he asked himself that night.

Shortly after the deaths in Jonestown, Milk wondered aloud about what Saturday Night Live would make of the tragedy. The program's only mention of it would also allude to his and the mayor's murders, Bill Murray, on SNL's Weekend Update, remarked three weeks later, "San Francisco residents have been shaken in recent weeks, and as a result of the increasingly gloomy climate of the city, singer Tony Bennett today had his heart picked up and moved to a safer place."

Others were not so sympathetic. Former California governor and future president Ronald Reagan remarked with vague derision, "San Francisco has undergone some changes, and it's been kind of a mecca for various kinds of people." Still others simply called it "the kook capital."

But San Franciscans knew better. "The spirit of this city is one of promise and hope," acting mayor Dianne Feinstein observed at the memorial service for Milk and Moscone. "As we reconstructed the city after the physical damage done by the earthquake and fire [of 1906], so too can we rebuild from the spiritual damage caused to the body politic."

VanDeCarr is working on a documentary about flag legacy of Jonestown.