Fifty years ago in early May, Columbians gathered in what had been known as McAlester Park to observe the one-year anniversary of the Kent and Jackson State killings of student anti-war protestors by National Guard troops and police. Many others were wounded.

Students at the University of Missouri sought a way to establish a permanent memorial to the victims at Kent and Jackson State. They met on a Saturday in early May and declared that the previously officially unnamed park between Sixth and Eighth Streets on Elm at the north edge of the MU campus should be known henceforth as Peace Park.

Students and others built a rock garden in the shape of a peace sign and planted it with evergreens and flowers.

Since then, the park has universally been referred to as Peace Park. The peace sign memorial has been refurbished many times, but still remains essentially unchanged from the day it was dedicated 50 years ago.

At 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 1, many of the same people who gathered 50 years ago will be present at Peace Park to commemorate the events of half a century ago.

The event is free and open to all.

Paul Blackman, the leader of the campus anti-war organization, Student Mobilization Committee, now an attorney in Kansas City, will speak, as will Dr. Jay Magner, a former leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and John Betz, president of the Charles Atkins Chapter of Veterans for Peace. Also speaking will be former SMC vice president, attorney Dan Viets, and Mark Haim, director of Peaceworks. Peaceworks, Veterans for Peace, Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Mid-Missouri Civil Liberties Association are sponsors of the event.