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A daylong celebration for journalist Rubén Salazar — including the unveiling of a 42-cent postage stamp — and a symposium highlighting his career and a look at his death is set for Thursday at the University of Arizona.

Olga Briseño, director of the UA College of Humanities Media, Democracy & Policy Initiative, worked for three years collecting signatures and gathering resolutions from national Latino organizations in support of a stamp.

The policy initiative works to identify the contributions of Latinos in U.S. politics, social justice and the media.

The national issuance of the stamp in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., is today.

Lisa Johnson, one of three of Salazar's children, is expected at the Tucson celebration. It will include an evening exhibit showcasing Salazar's personal belongings and writings at the Postal History Foundation museum.

Johnson was 9 years old when her father, who would have been 80 today, was killed on August 29, 1970, at the age of 42.

He was covering the National Chicano Moratorium March, a demonstration that drew some 30,000 to Laguna Park — now Salazar Park — to protest the disproportionate number of Latino youths being killed in the Vietnam War.

Salazar and his news crew made their way into the Silver Dollar Cafe and bar on Whittier Boulevard, blocks away from the park after covering a riot. Los Angeles law enforcement used tear gas and beat protesters at the park. Violence resulted in injuries, arrests and deaths.

Salazar was killed by a sheriff's deputy who fired a tear-gas projectile inside the Silver Dollar. The torpedo-shaped object hit Salazar in the temple. Authorities reported that the incident occurred after a report of a man with a gun inside the bar.

A coroner's inquiry ruled Salazar's death a homicide. No criminal charges were filed because authorities found no criminal intent.

A video clip produced by Los Angeles television station KTLA, the Los Angeles Times and Hoy Los Angeles, which covers race and ethnic news, will be aired at the celebration.

In recalling her father, Johnson said in the clip, "I wished that I hadn't been robbed of those years of being raised by him.

"But if our family had to sacrifice for a voice that is still so strong 37 years later, it is OK because of the awareness it has brought to what he was writing about. He was one of the great men. I'm really honored to be able to say that Rubén Salazar is my father."

At the LA Times, Salazar covered politics, the Vietnam War, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, and became the Mexico City bureau chief. The newspaper brought him back to Los Angeles in 1969 to cover a civil-rights movement by Chicano activists that was growing strong and not quite understood by the establishment.

Briseño said the Salazar stamp is a vehicle to discuss an honor the "accomplishments of Latinos on a national level."

People from Tucson and across the nation are e-mailing and calling Briseño because they want to share their stories and contribute items to the Salazar archive that Briseño hopes to turn into a traveling exhibit to be shown at colleges an universities.

Juan Soto, acting dean of Student Development at Pima Community College East Campus, donated to the archive pins, fliers and photographs from 1980 and 1990 commemorative events of the Chicano Moratorium at Salazar Park.

Ralph Arriola, a union leader and activist who attended the 1970 moratorium and photographed Salazar at the march as a working journalist, donated his photographs and shared his story for the archive.

"What we are doing with this stamp project is making sure that the contributions by great Chicanos does not go unnoticed," said Raúl Aguirre, policy initiative board member, and president and chief executive officer of REA Media Group. "We refuse to be invisible."