LAURA JOHNSTON KOHL
Laura Johnston Kohl grew up as an activist in Washington, D.C., and watched as many of her heroes were assassinated in the 1960s. While she was in high school and college, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and others were killed. While in college in Connecticut she continued her commitment to work for change and to make a difference. While exercising her civil rights to protest peacefully, she was tear-gassed while protesting the war in Viet Nam. After a brief marriage, a visit to Woodstock, and a stint working with the Black Panthers, she moved to California to join her sister. Soon after that, she was introduced to Peoples Temple and spent the next nine years in California and Guyana. She was away from Jonestown on the day when 913 of her friends and family died. The next twenty years were spent recovering, and rebuilding her life. For the first ten years, she lived in Synanon, a residential community. The following ten years, with her husband and young son, she began rebuilding her life. She earned her BA in philosophy/psychology, and then earned her California Teaching Credential. She also found some peace by becoming a Quaker. In the last ten years, she has become a public speaker about Peoples Temple and is on the Speakers’ Bureau of the Jonestown Institute. She has been interviewed locally, nationally, and internationally on television, on radio, in newspapers, in documentaries, and for research papers. She has written many articles about the details of life in Peoples Temple and her survival. She is an annual speaker at the Communal Studies Association Conferences, and her scholarly work is published in their Communal Societies Journal. Last March 2010, she published her own book, JONESTOWN SURVIVOR: An Insider’s Look. She continues to make frequent speeches locally and nationally about her experiences. She and her family live in San Diego, California, and she is a bilingual public school teacher and Quaker.
Her website is www.jonestownsurvivor.com.
Laura Johnston Kohl can be reached through her website, and appreciates questions and feedback.
JONESTOWN SURVIVOR: An Insider’s Look in print is available on amazon.com. (Publisher iUniverse)