Do you know the origin of the peace symbol?

Transcript:

I have a question… Do you know where the peace symbol came from? I didn’t.

When I was a kid, my dad and stepmom came home from a meeting at their church where they were given material about how youth culture was of the devil.

Obviously.

One of the outrageous claims they sat us down and talked to us about was that the peace sign was satanic because it was a cross with the two sides broken off.

I was probably about 10 years old at the time and I could already see that this was horseshit. I mean, my dad certainly knew better than that, he graduated high school in the late 60s, and while he wasn’t a huge hippie, he did attend the University of Michigan in the late 60s early 70s, so I know for a fact, he saw some peace signs up close.

Knowing that that was garbage, I needed to find some answers. I landed on an article by Abby Andrulitis on artandobject.com. I’ll link it up in the description.

The peace sign traces back to push for nuclear disarmament after World War II. It came from naval semaphore code where sailors would hold flags in certain positions to signify letters. The code for the letter N, in which the sailor would hold their arms out at their sides, angled down in the shape of an inverted V. The second code for the letter D, which was a single flag held above their head. If you overlay these two flag patterns on top of one another you get the recognizable peace sign with a single line through the middle, and an inverted V. The letters ND stood for Nuclear Disarmament.

Throw a circle around that and there you have the peace sign that we all know. The person who did that and brought this all together to make the iconic symbol was a British designer by the name of Gerald Holtom who created the icon in 1958 for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Holtom purposefully never copyrighted the symbol to allow its wide use and adoption.

Bayard Rustin, who participated in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958 and was the only American, and the only Black person to speak on that day brought the symbol back to the United States where it widely adopted, and in the 60s and became a unifying symbol in anti-war and civil rights movements. I didn’t know this about Bayard Rustin, but if you haven’t seen the 2023 film Rustin, starring Coleman Domingo, I encourage you to check it out. It doesn’t mention anything about the peace symbol, but that goes to show what a life that man lived.

So, in conclusion, the peace symbol isn’t a sign of the devil, phew. I have to say I knew it all along.

Thanks for watching, you made it this far, so be sure to like and subscribe. If you have a question you want an answer to, send an email to somanyquestionsshow@gmail.com and maybe I’ll try and find the answer.

Take good care.