Department of English                               Gymnasium Steglitz Berlin

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A Change Is Gonna Come

by Sam Cooke

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Sam Cooke (1931 - 1964)

“How many years can some people exist,
  before they're allowed to be free?
  How many times must a man turn his head,
  and pretend that he just doesn't see?”

If you know these lines, you might as well have a clue about the great impact that Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the wind” had on the Civil Rights and Anti War Movement in the 1960s in the United States. In fact, the song also inspired and encouraged another famous artist to give a political statement regarding the persistent discrimination of the black people during this period of time: Sam Cooke, known as ‘The King of Soul’. Cooke had contemplated writing a socially conscious song for a long time, but the danger of losing his mainly white fan base had prevented him from doing so. Accordingly, his previous songs had been primarily simple, light-hearted love ballads to sing along.

Sam Cooke was born on January 22, 1931 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Being one of eight children of the Baptist minister Charles Cook his first musical experience consisted in joining a gospel group together with his siblings, named ‘The Singing Children’. At the age of 19 he became lead vocalist of another gospel group, ‘The Soul Stirrers’ and gained first renown. In 1956 he released his first pop song ‘Loveable’ under the alias Dale Cooke in order not to alienate and offend his gospel fans. The single was no remarkable success, but his next release ‘You send me’ spent 6 weeks on top of Billboard R&B chart. In the following years he had various hits such as ‘Chain Gang’, ‘Bring it on home to me’, ‘Wonderful World’ and ‘Twisting the night away’. In 1961 he co-founded his own record label ‘SAR Records’. Unfortunately the distance between Cooke and his wife Barbara Campbell, whom he had married two years ago, deepened due to a terrible stroke of fate, he blamed her for: Their 3-year-old son Vincent drowned in their frontyard pool after he wandered away from his mother’s supervision. This accident led Cooke into a deep depression he also tried to deal with in his most famous song ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, in which he manages to merge despair and whole-hearted hope.

In order to understand the song on the whole a little better, let’s take a closer look at each stanza.
What might first catch eye and ear is the symbol of the river in the first two lines: “I was born by the river in a little tent/ and just like the river I've been running ever since”. This might allude to his hometown Clarksdale near the Mississippi River, but is also a metaphor to express the feelings of homelessness connected with his constant touring. In addition the word ‘tent’ recalls the humble beginnings before he became a famous star.
In the next verse he describes the agony and inner turmoil caused by the loss of his son and that his faith in god had been tested and shaken. While these personal remarks are very abstract, the third verse was cut out for its distinct relation to the racial segregation in America. That means that the public facilities such as schools, cinemas or theatres were divided into certain areas for black and for white people, whereupon the black domains were of inferior quality. Sam Cooke learned that the hard way, when he was turned away from a ‘whites only motel’ in Shreveport, Louisiana. After he insisted on his right- for his reservation had earlier been accepted- he was arrested for disturbing the peace. In order to overcome this injustice he summons the black community to unite, addressing each one of them as ‘Brother’ and asking them to support his endeavours: ‘Help me, please!'

Having captured this wide range of emotions such as distress, anger and frustration his outlook is clearly an optimistic one, though. By ending each verse with the assertion ‘I know a change is gonna come’ he conveys that he is firmly convinced of oncoming improvements in the face of the adverse conditions the African-Americans were suffering at that time. This fact made the song very suitable for the Civil Rights Movement, for which it served as an anthem.
About 40 years after Martin Luther King had delivered his speech ‘I have a dream’ and Sam Cooke had expressed the fight for equality in his song, the dream was brought to fruition- at least partially- when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States in 2008. In his inauguration speech he paraphrased the chorus of Cooke’s song, when he explained: “It’s been a long time coming, but tonight change has come to America.”

(J.H. , Jan.2012)