Pictures in the News No. 5, an English fold-out photo sheet distributed from Beirut with a catalog date of 12 March 1965. Five of its six stories are about Africa and the White House; the sixth shows college students rebuilding a Baptist church in Mississippi that was burned after a rally for "Negro rights" (NAID 6949200).
Content note: this page discusses the burning of a church after a civil rights meeting.
The sheet
Six stories with photographs. American grain unloaded at Mogadiscio for a famine. An American professor recording Ibo words for a dictionary at Ibadan. American students and Nigerian children trading folksongs. The Johnsons' party for 150 orphans. Three African ambassadors at the United Nations. And at the end, two pictures from Mississippi.
COLLEGE STUDENTS REBUILD A CHURCH
Students and teachers of several American colleges spent their Christmas vacation as volunteer workers rebuilding a Baptist church in Mississippi. The church was burned after a rally for Negro rights had been held there. LEFT PHOTO: Students lay the foundation for the rebuilt church. RIGHT PHOTO: On Christmas Day, Reverend Roy McDonald conducts the first service in the partially-completed church.
Who made it
The U.S. Information Agency issued the series from Beirut; the record credits RSC Beirut. The sheet carries a series name and a code and no agency name. FRAME counts the source as blurred. The National Archives files it in Record Group 306 with the agency's posters for Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
How to read it
The caption says something an information service did not have to say. A church was burned in the United States because a civil rights rally had met in it. That is a hard fact about the country, and the sheet printed it for readers abroad. This site gives the agency credit for that. It is more than the 1958 Dacca sheet on a Virginia school was willing to say.
The caption is also built to end well. It names the volunteers, the Christmas service, and the minister. It does not name the town, who set the fire, or whether anyone was charged. The burning is passive: "the church was burned." FRAME tags the sheet card stacking and transfer, and the last story shows the method in small. The crime is the setup; the rebuilding is the story; the arsonist is offstage. Set beside grain for Somalia and a White House party, the item reads as one more instance of American goodwill.
The record this site holds supports the harder version. The Citizens' Councils case study records Klan bombings in Birmingham in 1963, including the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four, and a Mississippi state agency that paid the Councils. A government that wants credit abroad for the volunteers owes its own citizens the rest: who did it, and what the law did about it. The period is gathered on US civil rights era messaging, 1954–1969.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Pictures in the News poster, No. 5 (English, Beirut), catalog date 12 March 1965.
- U.S. National Archives, Record Group 306, Posters in Asia, Latin America, Middle East, NAID 6949200 (306-PPB-276), retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
