The peace symbol - the famous circle with three lines in the center - made its debut on a wet, chilly Good Friday - April 4, 1958 - in London's Trafalgar Square, where thousands gathered to support a ban

Kim Kern's then-wife, Jenny, looks through a peace sign window in the front door of Strawberry Fields in this 1969 photo. The store, which later became Fields Gallery, close in 2006.

Christine Smith’s life, at this point, is enveloped in peace.

As the coordinator of the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice, she’s been embroiled with the coalition in protesting the war in Iraq with weekly peace vigils since Sept. 7, 2002.

But she doesn’t recall when the symbol of peace first gained prominence 50 years ago this month.

“I was alive, but I don’t remember,” she says, laughing. “In the ’60s, we used the peace symbol, and it was largely a non-nuclear (symbol). I’m not real sure how it got to be peace in general.”

The peace symbol – the famous circle with three lines in the center – made its debut on a wet, chilly Good Friday – April 4, 1958 – in London’s Trafalgar Square, where thousands gathered to support a “ban the bomb” movement.

The symbol had been designed by Gerald Holtom, a British textile designer, who initially considered using a cross, but the idea didn’t go over well with the churches he sought as allies. The idea was to use shipping signals to create a symbol for the anti-nuclear movement.

“When sailors on a ship send signals by a flag to each other, they have different positions for the flags, held by a person – not run up a pole – to send messages and the symbols, and it’s a combination of the symbols for N and D, and that stands for nuclear disarmament,” says Allan Hanson, professor of anthropology at Kansas University and a founding member of the coalition. “And so they’re just kind of superimposed, the one on the other, and that’s where that design comes from.”

Peace, changing

Where its transition from an anti-nuclear symbol to the symbol of general peace came in is more unclear. While Holtom designed the symbol, the U.S Patent and Trademark Office ruled in 1970 that it was in the public domain. It was quickly commercialized, showing up, among other places, on packages of Lucky Strike cigarettes, but also on a 1999 postage stamp after a public vote to pick 15 commemoratives to honor the 1960s.

“I don’t know how specific it was to nuclear disarmament at the beginning. I mean, it came out of the ‘ban the bomb’ movement, and it does have that meaning of nuclear disarmament, the N and the D, and it’s certainly expanded a great deal in its meaning now so that it means peace in general,” says Hanson, who has been involved in the peace movement for more than 30 years. “It’s sort of the analogy of the dove or something of that sort in standing for peace and so there is that expansion to it. So, any aspect of peace, I think, would now be covered under the meaning of that symbol.”

Peace then

In fact, recently, National Geographic came out with “Peace: The Biography of a Symbol,” by Ken Kolsbun with Michael S. Sweeney, which traces the symbol’s origins to the influence it had, and retains, in social movements. The book focuses more on the backdrop of the peace movement generally, from its antecedents in the McCarthyism of the 1950s to nuclear proliferation, Vietnam, the 1970 Kent State massacre and the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention to its later promotions of other causes.

The book is enhanced by numerous photos, some chillingly familiar, some simply nostalgic. Who can forget the frantic teenager kneeling over the fallen student at Kent State? Or the student sticking a flower in the barrel of a National Guard rifle? Or the whaling ship bearing down on a Greenpeace raft? Or Woodstock?

It has become “a rallying cry for almost any group working for social change,” the authors write.

Peace now

Hanson and Smith, of course, see it in the traditional, anti-war, anti-bomb sense these days with the United States’ involvement in the Iraq War.

Recently, Smith, Hanson and the coalition have been taking care of CODEPINK’s Peace Ribbon Project, a set of panels from across the country that are being displayed on weekends around Lawrence in remembrance of soldiers and even Iraq civilians who have died in Iraq.

Smith says she’s glad the symbol has stuck around for 50 years.

“I’m glad those people did it all those years ago and I’m glad we still use it. We’re still working too, particularly to do away with nuclear weapons,” she says. “I mean, it’s gotten so messy from 50 years ago.”