Leo Joseph Ryan Jr. (May 5, 1925 – November 18, 1978) was an American teacher and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the U.S. Representative from California's 11th congressional district from 1973 until his assassination during the Jonestown massacre in 1978.
After the Watts riots of 1965, Ryan took a job as a substitute school teacher to investigate and document conditions in the area. In 1970, he launched an investigation into California prisons. While presiding as chairman of the Assembly committee that oversaw prison reform, he used a pseudonym to enter Folsom State Prison as an inmate. During his time in Congress, Ryan traveled to Newfoundland to investigate the practice of seal hunting. He was also famous for vocal criticism of the lack of Congressional oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and co-authored the Hughes–Ryan Amendment, passed in 1974.
Ryan was shot and killed at an airstrip in Guyana on November 18, 1978, as he and his party were attempting to leave. He had traveled to Guyana to investigate claims that people were being held against their will at the Peoples Temple Jonestown settlement. Shortly after the airstrip shootings, 909 members of the Jonestown settlement died in a mass suicide-murder by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid. He was the second sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives to be assassinated in office, after James M. Hinds in 1868.
Ryan was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1983.
Early life and education[]
Ryan was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. During his early life his family moved frequently, through Illinois, Florida, New York, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts. Ryan graduated from Campion Jesuit High School in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, in 1943. He then received V-12 officer training at Bates College and served with the United States Navy from 1943 to 1946 as a submariner.
Ryan graduated from Nebraska's Creighton University with a B.A. in 1949 and an M.S. in 1951, He served as a teacher, school administrator and South San Francisco city councilman from 1956 to 1962. He taught English at Capuchino High School, and chaperoned the marching band in 1961 to Washington, D.C., to participate in President John F. Kennedy's inaugural parade. Ryan was inspired by Kennedy's call to service in his inaugural address and decided to run for higher office.