"A change IS coming! Will you be on the right side?" BlackHistoryMonth2016

If Sam Cooke were alive to update “A Change Is Gonna Come” for the current political scene, he might be tempted to rename it “The More Things Change.” Photograph by AP

The Unlikely Story of "A Change is Gonna Come"

Half a century ago, on March 7, 1965, state troopers knocked down, gassed, and beat a number of men and women who were participating in a peaceful march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama. That same day, radio listeners around the country might have heard Sam Cooke singing a lyric he’d written and recorded several months earlier, but which could have been describing the “Bloody Sunday” confrontation on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Then I go to my brother
And I say, “Brother, help me please.”
But he winds up knockin’ me
Back down on my knees

RedEye