TS MONK quintessential Monk on Monk Revisited By Robert Walker
The year is 1968 and America seems to be coming unhinged with social, political, and economic challenges that were exacerbated by the VietNam War and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, followed by the election of Richard M. Nixon. It was the year of the Democratic National Convention where thousands of students, antiwar activists, and other demonstrators, including groups like the Yippies, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panthers were met with a violent police response called out by Mayor Richard Daley, and broadcast into American homes on TV that simply seemed like anarchy, much in the way the siege on the United States Capitol appeared to most of us watching from home on January 6th, 2021 - 53 years later. And who can ever forget the iconic photo of the show of support from the two Olympians, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who stood on those podiums after receiving their medals, arms stretched out with their hands clenched in a fist donning a black leather glove as the national anthem played out to the world. To this day that photo of the two Olympians remains one of the most powerful images captured in sports history. On October 27th, 1968 renowned jazz pianist Thelonious Monk and his quartet came to Palo Alto California to perform a concert at the town’s high school.
