A Change is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke

"A Change is Gonna Come" was a 1964 single for Sam Cooke, written and recorded first in 1963 and released under the RCA Victor label shortly after his death in 1964.  This song became unofficially a Civil Rights protest song recorded again and again by master singer, usually male, master singer--Al Green, Bobby Womack, Luther Vandross, Terence Trent Darby.  On the version included in the packet for the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, it is sung by Aretha Franklin to her own piano accompaniment in 1967.  According to Wikipedia, Cooke was moved by Bob Dylan's "Blowin in the Wind" in 1963, which was also a song about racism.  After speaking with sit=in demonstrators in Durham North Carolina following a concert, Cooke returned to his tour bus and wrote the first draft. Cooke's 18 month old son, Vincent, had also died by an accidental drowning in June of that year.  In the same year when Cooke and the band had tried to register at a "whites only" motel in Shreveport, Louisiana, they were arrrested for disturbing the peace.