Civil Rights Movement – The Human Rights Warrior

Sunset after a storm in the Sandwich Ridge mountains, New Hampshire — Sunset after a storm in the Sandwich Ridge Mountains, New Hampshire

I took this photo last year during a family vacation in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire. A thunderstorm raged all afternoon, but just as we were finishing dinner the storm suddenly ended. Three generations of extended family went out into the still-damp field to watch the sunset reflected on the lifting storm clouds. As often happens in the mountains, it was a dramatic change. At the time, and ever since, the play of setting sun on passing thunderheads makes me think of Sam Cooke and “A Change is Gonna Come“. Recorded in January 1964, the song became one of the greatest anthems of the Civil Rights Movement.

A Change is Gonna Come

I was born by the river in a little tent.

Ohh and just like the river,

I’ve been running ev’r since.

It’s been a long time, a long time coming

But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will

It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die

‘Cause I don’t know what’s up there, beyond the sky

It’s been a long, a long time coming

But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.

I go to the movie and I go downtown.

Somebody keep tellin’ me don’t hang around.

It’s been a long, a long time coming

But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.

Then I go to my brother

And I say brother help me please.

But he winds up knockin’ me

Back down on my knees, ohh

There have been times that I thought

I couldn’t last for long

But now I think I’m able to carry on

It’s been a long, a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will.

A singer who blurred the lines between gospel, R&B and pop, Cooke was reportedly inspired to write “A Change is Gonna Come” by Bob Dylan and “Blowin’ In The Wind”. While on tour in October 1963, Cooke and his band were turned away from a “whites only” motel in Shreveport, Louisiana where they had a reservation. When they protested, they were arrested and thrown in jail for disturbing the peace. Not long after, Sam Cooke wrote “A Change is Gonna Come”

“Sam as a writer saw himself almost as a reporter,” said biographer Peter Guralnick said in one interview. “He took all of those experiences[of racism],” Guralnick says, “but he enlarged upon them and he broadened them to the point that the song… becomes a statement of what a generation had had to endure.”

The song was only a modest commercial success and Sam Cooke only performed it live once. Yet “A Change Is Gonna Come” has become an iconic symbol of triumph over adversity. It has been called Sam Cooke’s legacy and “heralded as his magnus opum”. In 2005, it was voted number 12 in Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It has also been selected National Public Radio (NPR) as one of the 300 most important songs. In 2007, it was added by the Library of Congress to the National Recording Registry. Bettye LaVette performed “A Change Is Gonna Come” with Jon Bon Jovi, at the Lincoln Memorial during the first inaugural concert for President Obama, introducing a new generation to Sam Cooke. (Watch the video here .)

Sam Cooke died on December 11, 1964 in a shooting at a Los Angeles motel. He was 33 years old.

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Today is a gray and cold day where I live – a day on the tipping point between winter and spring. To fight the doldrums, I took my two youngest children swimming at the our local YMCA pool. As I looked at all the kids laughing and playing in the pool, the splashing water sparkling on skin that was black and white and every shade in between, I realized that this was a scene that wasn’t even possible in most of the United States when Sam Cooke wrote “A Change Is Gonna Come” in 1964. And while we still have a ways to go, Sam Cooke was correct. The storm clouds will pass and the sun will come out.

“But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will.”