"Peace: The Biography of a Symbol"

JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

Denise Sweeney, owner of A little Bit Hippy, says the war in Iraq has revived the interest in peace symbols.

"Give peace a chance." -- John Lennon

"Peace and love." -- 1960s slogan

"A time for peace -- I swear it's not too late." -- Pete Seeger, and the book of Ecclesiastes.

Fifty years ago this month, on April 4, 1958, protesters in London's Trafalgar Square unveiled a symbol that changed the world.

The peace symbol, that is.

No, the familiar little upside down "y" with the extra leg inside a circle hasn't brought about world peace yet. Far from it. But it has become an almost universally recognized symbol for something that still resonates today.

Google "peace," and what pops up first?

Peace symbols.

Several of them.

And yet, how little understood the peace icon remains at 50! The Internet is full of theories about its origins. It is a symbol for the Antichrist, we read. It was found on the graves of SS soldiers after World War II. It is an upside-down cross. It is the footprint of a chicken. It was inspired by Francisco Goya's famous anti-war painting, "The Third of May."

The last is actually partly correct. But before we go there, here's a little history about one of the best-known symbols on the planet.

No nukes

The symbol was created in England by a man named Gerald Holtom. A textile designer from Twickenham, Holtom was once described by his daughter, Rebecca, as "very extroverted ... cheerful, angry, domineering, highly intelligent, artistic, inventive ... just pure in thought and maybe almost born before his time."

He was a peacenik in 1958 -- one very concerned about nuclear weapons.

When he learned about the upcoming protest march to begin in Trafalgar Square, he took it upon himself to create a symbol for the march and for the nuclear disarmament movement, according to "Peace: The Biography of a Symbol" (inset), a new book from National Geographic. (The book by Ken Kolsbun and Michael Sweeney is a quick and easy read, with lots of big-type highlights and pictures on every page.)

The peace symbol quickly made its way overseas, via a picture of the no nukes march published in Life magazine 10 days later. "It was like Kilroy," said Kolsbun, referring to the popular "Kilroy was here" graffiti that was widespread during World War II.

In the next decade, the symbol would become closely associated with the anti-Vietnam War movement and the '60s counterculture in America.

The ultimate hippie icon, in fact, may be the peace sign on the Volkswagen bus.

No single answer

So what does the peace symbol represent, exactly?

There is probably more than one answer. But the lines in the symbol are a melding of semaphore symbols for the letters "n" and "d" -- for "nuclear disarmament." (Semaphore is the system of communicating via flags or lights usually associated with railroads and ships.)

But it's also more than that.

"I think you definitely can see a couple of things," said Sweeney, the Utah State University journalism professor who shares credit on the "Peace" book. "One is the idea of a broken cross."

In fact, Holtom first considered putting a simple cross in his design but later revised the idea.

And then there's Goya. Holtom once wrote to a friend that when he designed the symbol, he was depressed and thinking of the Spanish painter's famous painting, "The Third of May."

"I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outward and downward in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad. ... I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle around it. ... It was ridiculous at first and such a puny thing," he wrote.

Either Holtom misremembered the painting, however, or he intentionally turned it upside down. The peasant's arms in "The Third of May" are raised, not lowered, in the manner of countless depictions of Jesus on the cross.

Part of the peace symbol's appeal could be its very ambiguity.

Far from being a symbol for the nuclear disarmament movement only, it has been appropriated for many things through the years, from Greenpeace to Code Pink, noted Kolsbun, a game inventor and peace activist who lives in California.

"You can sort of read what you want into it," Sweeney said.

Peace in Roanoke

If you're looking for a peace symbol in Roanoke, you don't have to go very far.

Ask Denise Sweeney, the owner of A Little Bit Hippy at Towers Shopping Center, how many peace symbols she has on hand.

"Oh my gosh. Hundreds."

She has peace symbol earrings and peace symbol necklaces, peace symbol flags and shirts and patches and bumper stickers and beads. She has peace symbol toe rings and peace symbols that glow in the dark.

Sweeney (no relation to Michael Sweeney), who at 56 saw plenty of peace symbols in the '60s, still drives a Volkswagen bus. "I was always kind of a free spirit."

She credits the war in Iraq with reviving the demand for peace symbols. "Until the war started you couldn't find them, hardly. Now you have no trouble," Sweeney said.

And yet, it may be symbolic of how far we've come from the '50s and '60s that not all the peace symbol makers nowadays get it right.

"Let me show you something that really irritates me" said Sweeney, picking up a box of '60s-themed candy. The peace symbol on the box was missing the middle line at the bottom of the circle.

Without that line, Sweeney pointed out, disgusted, the peace symbol becomes the logo for Mercedes-Benz.