One Night In Miami: True Story & Meaning Behind Sam Cooke's Final Song
What's the true meaning behind Sam Cooke's final song in One Night in Miami, and how much of the historical context is accurate? We break it all down.
What's the true meaning behind Sam Cooke's final song in One Night in Miami, and how much of the historical context is accurate? The Amazon Prime movie suggests that civil rights activist Malcolm X inspired the legendary R&B singer to construct "A Change Is Gonna Come," but it seems that writer Kemp Powers and director Regina King took some creative liberties with their storytelling approach. Fortunately, the narrative tweaks allow for a better understanding of Cooke's iconic anthem and its cultural impact.
One Night in Miami is based on a real meeting between Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), NFL star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and boxer Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), later known as Muhammad Ali. On February 25, 1964, the friends assemble at a Miami room to celebrate Clay's newly-acquired heavyweight title and collectively discuss their roles in the ongoing civil rights movement, just three months after the November 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. In a key scene, Malcolm X teases Cooke about his fizzy romantic lyrical content, and challenges him to be more thoughtful and meaningful as a songwriter. The Nation of Islam leader even claims that Cooke "twisted" and "perverted" church songs for a mainstream white audience, and states that Bob Dylan, "a white boy from Minnesota," somehow managed to capture the struggles of the movement with his 1963 folk song "Blowin' in the Wind." One Night in Miami ends with Cooke debuting "A Change Is Gonna Come," a song that eventually became a civil rights anthem, and also established the musician as far more than just a popular crooner. In a cruel twist of fate, though, Cooke was tragically murdered in December 1964 at age 33.
In reality, Cooke recorded "A Change Is Gonna Come" approximately one month before he met with Malcolm X and company in late February 1964. The lyrics were reportedly inspired by an October 1963 incident, in which Cooke and his wife Barbara experienced racism after being denied a hotel room in Shreveport, Louisiana. At the time, "Blowin' in the Wind" had released just two months prior, and so Cooke decided to build upon the song's cultural momentum, albeit with a lyrical structure that aligned with his personal experiences as a Black man in America. In One Night in Miami, the narrative implies that Malcolm X prompted Cooke to write "A Change Is Gonna Come," when in reality the song had already been playing on the radio for two weeks by the time they had their meeting.
Lyrically, "A Change Is Gonna Come" captured the mood of so many people, white and black, in early 1964. The country had been traumatized by the aforementioned Kennedy assassination, and systemic racism was at the forefront of cultural tensions, certainly after a September 1963 church bombing that killed four young Black girls in Birmingham, Alabama. "A Change Is Gonna Come" preceded the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by just three months, but despite the new legislation, systemic racism wasn't going to end overnight, of course. With "A Change Is Gonna Come," Cooke acknowledges the bigger picture, along with all the existential angst that he felt because of his skin color. For dramatic purposes, that stress is mostly embodied by Malcolm X in the Amazon Prime movie.
One Night in Miami concludes with "A Change Is Gonna Come" because it functions as a narrative punctuation mark, and also a dark subtextual reminder of what happened next. Storywise, the song complements the character arcs within the movie, as Brown retires from the NFL to pursue a film career, and Clay joins the Nation of Islam, thus resulting in his name change. In addition, Cooke moves forward in his career as a songwriter, and Malcolm X reacts to his friend's monumental achievement while experiencing steady death threats after leaving the Nation of Islam. Given that Cooke was murdered in December 1964 and that Malcolm X was assassinated just three months later, there's a deeper cultural meaning to "A Change Is Gonna Come," as the song represents a passing of the torch, which was ultimately carried by Muhammad Ali over the next 50 years.