Alaska, Hawaii and the 49-star flag on a 1959 Amharic-English photo sheet

Pictorial Review, Volume II, Number 10, an Amharic-English photo sheet from Addis Ababa filed with U.S. Information Agency posters, catalog date 7 July 1959. Maps, a 49-star flag, scenes of Alaska and portraits of six Hawaiian girls labeled by ancestry sit under a text tying statehood to the Declaration of Independence (NAID 6948759).

What the sheet shows

Under a masthead in Amharic and English, this photo sheet carries maps of Alaska and Hawaii, a 49-star flag, Alaskan and Hawaiian scenes, and portraits of six Hawaiian girls labeled by ancestry, as the archive lists them. Amharic columns run parallel to English captions. The archive transcribes the English in full and leaves the Amharic untranscribed.

PICTORIAL REVIEW Volume II Number 10

One-hundred and eighty-three years ago the United States of America adopted the Declaration of Independence, bringing freedom and self-rule for the original 13 states. [...] With their admission citizens of the two new states will elect their own representatives in Congress, conduct their own internal affairs and have full rights as called for in the Declaration of Independence. [...]

A group of Eskimos, original inhabitants of Alaska, enjoy a game called "blanket toss."

[...]

Many races make up Hawaii's population: left to right, top row: a girl of Chinese origin, a girl of Japanese-Portuguese parentage, a girl of Hawaiian Dutch ancestry; bottom row: a girl of Portuguese descent, Chinese-Hawaiian-European girl, Chinese-Hawaiian girl.

A masthead from Addis Ababa

The National Archives files the sheet in Record Group 306, with the U.S. Information Agency's posters distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, under a catalog date of 7 July 1959. The archive's title places it in Addis Ababa. The maker line names the agency and its State Department predecessor. The record notes that no imprint or credit line appears on the scan, and FRAME classes the source as blurred. On its face, the sheet carries the masthead Pictorial Review and no sender's name.

Statehood explained, a population on show

FRAME tags it glittering generalities, transfer and card stacking. The flag and the Declaration's words, which the sheet gives as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," are attached to the new states, and Hawaii's mixed population is presented as a showcase. The archive files the themes as elections and party politics, and race and ethnicity.

The civic content is solid. The text says what statehood means in practice: the new states will elect their own members of Congress and run their own internal affairs. Self-government extended to more citizens is exactly what the Declaration's language was for, and the sheet ties the two together without exaggeration.

The portraits are where the showcase shows. Six girls are labeled by ancestry and nothing else: not by name, not by what they do. The caption's point is that many races make up Hawaii's population. Two rows of faces labeled only by ancestry turn the girls into exhibits. The sheet's sender, too, stays off the page.

Earlier sheets in the agency's files used American symbols the same way: a Heroes Day sheet with Lincoln and a Dutch poster of Independence Hall. The program is described on the USIA posters abroad hub.