Sam Cooke wrote 'A Change Is Gonna Come' because of an incident in Louisiana

When on tour in Shreveport, Louisiana, Sam Cooke had an experience on North Market Street (near the KTAL studios) that changed his life and inspired one of the most popular songs in American history.

SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) — Sam Cooke has been called the most famous soul singer in history. During the Civil Rights Movement, he was loved by both Black and Caucasian audiences. But did you know that one of Cooke's most famous songs was written about an incident that happened in Shreveport, Louisiana?

Here's the story.

Who was Sam Cooke?

Cooke started his singing career as a Gospel singer. When he switched to secular music, he found relatively quick success and quickly climbed the charts in the Rhythm and Blues scene. But as his fame grew, Sam Cooke faced the challenges of singing in the South during the Jim Crow era.

Equipped with one of the most beautiful voices in recent memory, Samuel Cooke, better known as Sam, was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and raised in Chicago, Illinois.

The son of a Baptist Minister named Charles Cook, Sam began his singing career as the lead gospel singer in a Pine Bluff, Arkansas group called the “Soul Stirrers.” While with the group, he wrote and sang several classics.

Then in 1957, Cooke switched his focus from gospel to soul and R&B music.

Cooke’s transition into R&B was wildly successful. He wrote and sang several songs that became mainstream hits, such as “Chain Gang,” “Twisting the Night Away,” and “Another Saturday Night.” His success led him to perform at many venues throughout the country.

And in 1963, Sam Cooke was set to perform at the prestigious Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport.

Sam Cooke in Shreveport

Cooke and members of the “Super Sonic Attractions” went to a Holiday Inn in Shreveport on October 8, 1963, and their intentions were to settle in for a while before their performance at the Municipal Auditorium.

The Holiday Inn on North Market is where the trouble began.

Cooke had arranged to stay at the Holiday Inn before his arrival, but when he arrived in person, the desk clerk said there were no more empty rooms at the hotel. This was a common excuse given to many African Americans of the era when they were denied service because of the color of their skin, and in Shreveport, the rules of Jim Crow were so unforgivably strict there was no possible exception for even a famous musician of color.

Cooke was denied the room because of his race, which infuriated Sam and his brother Charles. Sam’s wife Barbara and his manager were also at the Holiday Inn on North Market and denied lodging even though the rooms had been booked in advance.

Soon, the horn of a car was blaring outside of the Holiday Inn.

One of Cooke’s close friends, David Washington, later said the honking was not intentional and was, instead, a result of a malfunction with the Maserati. But the honking was enough for Sam, Charles, Barbara, and Roy Craine to be accused of disturbing the peace. All four of them were arrested later at the Castle Hotel, one of the only hotels in Shreveport where Black travelers could stay while in the city.

Despite their arrest, Sam and Charles, Barbara, and Roy made bail after paying the $102.50 bond each. And even though there was also a bomb threat at the Municipal Auditorium, Cooke was still able to perform.

But Cooke’s experiences in Shreveport bothered him deeply.

The chaos of 1963

1963 proved to be an intense year for racial tensions all around the country. The 16th Street Church Bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, was orchestrated by the Ku Klux Klan. There was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his renowned “I Have a Dream” speech.

In Shreveport, there was the protest of the 16th Street Church bombing that led to the brutal beating of Rev. Dr. Harry Blake.

The unrest was unavoidable, and Cooke was not spared the blunt force of racism even though he was wildly famous.

But Cooke was no stranger to the overt racism he encountered during his stay in Shreveport in 1963, as his previous tours throughout the South were riddled with disturbing incidences.

Cooke and another singer, Clyde McPhatter, refused to perform in Memphis, Tennessee after they discovered the audience was segregated and Black attendees were forced to sit in the backside of the hall.

With encounters like this frequent throughout the South, it is clear that Cooke’s Shreveport experience was the breaking point that inspired him to write a new song that would become a Civil Rights anthem for marginalized groups: “A Change is Gonna Come.”

According to Cooke’s biographer, the song “was less work than any song he’d ever written.” Cooke wrote the song within a month of his experience in Shreveport, and he took a substantial risk by writing a song with overt messaging that supported the Civil Rights Movement. He risked alienating his white audience. But Cooke knew that at some point, race relations had to shift. He knew change was imminent despite the many obstacles he and many African Americans endured.

He knew that change was gonna come.

Cooke’s sudden death

During a brief seven-year run before his abrupt passing in 1964, Cooke had an astounding 30 American Top 40 hits. But Cooke’s success was not just limited to writing, singing and performing. He became the first African American singer to manage his own record label, then known as SAR Records.

Cooke was more than just a singer. He was a nationally known superstar with a list of friends that included Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) and Jim Brown (NFL Hall of Famer.) He was also friends with Malcolm X, a revolutionary civil rights icon. Cooke’s legendary friendship with Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Cassius Clay was made into the film One Night in Miami, which depicts the night Clay became the World Heavyweight Champion at just 22 years old.

The film also follows as the quartet celebrates Clay, who announced his conversion to Islam the day after he became the World Heavyweight Champion and changed his name to Mohammed Ali. Events depicted in the movie occurred during and after the championship against Sonny Liston. It was a real-life parallel of the time when Clay asked to have his close friend Sam Cooke come to the ring and then stated, before the press, that Cooke was “the world’s greatest rock and roll singer.”

“A Change is Gonna Come” has transcended its time and remains a fixture in popular culture. In 2021, Rolling Stone ranked it number 3 on the list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In its earliest form, the version played on radio stations did not include the verse alluding to his experience in Shreveport:

“I go to the movie, and I go downtown/Somebody keep telling me, don’t hang around.”

Unfortunately, Cooke did not live to see the song’s success. He died in 1964 at the age of 33 under mysterious circumstances.

Despite Cooke’s abrupt passing, he has remained a musical icon. He was posthumously inducted into the legendary class of 1986 in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, next to James Brown, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, and several other genre icons.

In 1999, Cooke was gifted the Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award. His song “A Change is Gonna Come” has been covered and sampled more than 500 times by notable artists such as Beyoncé, Arthea Franklin, Al Green, Otis Redding, and many other legends of the music industry.

Fifty-six years after the Holiday Inn incident, Shreveport’s then-Mayor Adrian Perkins apologized on behalf of the city for Cooke’s treatment. Perkins said the apology was in order.

"I am issuing this apology for two reasons: First, the Cooke family deserves it. Second, because Sam Cooke’s legacy reminds us that change comes when people take action,” said Perkins.

Even though dreary circumstances caused Cooke to write “A Change is Gonna Come,” Cooke used his voice to take a stand against injustice in an unforgettable way.

Today, Cooke's legend lives on through one of the most influential songs in American history.

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