In October 1964, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Tippah County, founded by former slaves as the county's first black church, was destroyed by fire after a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party rally led there by Fannie Lou Hamer. The church was one of almost forty churches burned in Mississippi during a six-month period that year. Five Oberlin College students were present at a voter registration rally the night the church burned and carried news of the attack back to Ohio. In response, seventeen Oberlin students and three faculty members joined church members and other volunteers to rebuild, calling themselves Carpenters for Christmas. Beginning on December 22, they completed the foundation and erected four walls by Christmas Day, when a service was held by the church's pastor, the Rev. John R. McDonald, with a scripture reading by Cleveland Sellers, local COFO project director. Congregations of other burned churches had been offered rebuilding help by local whites only if the rebuilt churches were not used for voter registration or other civil rights activities, but those offers were refused. The remaining walls, roof, and steeple were finished before the end of Christmas vacation, and by January 2 the building was operable again as a church and meeting place for civil rights activities. On December 30, Mrs. Annie Devine addressed a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party rally at the reconstructed church attended by the volunteer carpenters and more than 200 community members.