Appreciating "A Change Is Gonna Come"

Sam Cooke

By the early 1960s the civil rights movement had spread beyond the courtroom to the streets of America. It inspired both white and black songwriters. One of the best songs of this era, and the de facto anthem of the civil rights movement, was Sam Cooke’s 1964 “A Change is Gonna Come.”

That year Sam Cooke turned 33 years old. His pure, soulful voice and good looks had won him a large crossover audience. Born in Clarksdale, MS, his large, musical family moved to Chicago two years later. His father was a black preacher. Cooke earned his musical chops in the world of gospel before finding success in pop music.

Sam Cooke knew, and I’m sure his record company reinforced, that overt participation in the civil rights movement risked alienating his white audience. By 1963 Cooke was prepared to test the consequences of breaking this economic leash. He was chagrined that a “white boy” named Bob Dylan had written the powerful “Blowin’ in the Wind,” itself borrowing from the Negro spiritual “No More Auction Block.” Then, that fall, touring in Shreveport, LA, Cooke had attempted to register at a Holiday Inn, made an uproar when refused, and was jailed for his efforts. Several months later he demo’d “A Change is Gonna Come” to friends.

Knowing Cooke’s background, it’s hard not to hear the gospel tradition in his song. But David Cantwell, writing in The New Yorker last year (March 17, 2015), argues that the song itself, as well as Rene Hall’s orchestral arrangement, may owe more to the American musical theater, especially Kern and Hammerstein’s “Ol’ Man River.” Cooke had recorded “Ol’ Man River” on his first album. His line “It’s been too hard livin’, but I’m afraid to die” is an obvious rework of Oscar Hammerstein’s “I’m tired of livin’ and scared of dyin’.”

Whatever its sources, “A Change is Gonna Come” works on every level. In five brief stanzas, it carries the audience from a dark place of suffering to a hopeful new day. Rolling Stone ranked it #12 in its list of greatest songs. Cooke said that he hoped the song would make his father proud.

Late in 1964, almost coincident with the song’s release as a single, Sam Cooke was shot and killed at an LA motel, silencing one of the great voices of the 20th century.

The Serendipity of History

My Black History month continues…

Part II: The Serendipity of History

History doesn’t allow re-dos, so we’ll never know whether without Rosa Parks there would have been Martin Luther King, Jr.  It’s certainly plausible. In any case the solitary protest of the former and the emergence of the latter are forever intertwined.

After the arrest of Rosa Parks on Thursday, December 1, 1955 events moved quickly. Today we would say things went viral.

From the police station on Thursday evening Rosa called her mother, whose first words “Did they beat you?” reflect African-American’s then near-universal fear of the criminal justice system in the South. Her mother called the home of E.D. Nixon, head of the local NAACP and de facto point man for the Montgomery black community. She spoke to Nixon’s wife, who called her husband and pretty much ordered him to find out what happened to Rosa Parks and fix it.

E.D. Nixon reached out to Clifford Durr, the white attorney who had sponsored Rosa’s trip to the Highlander Folk School, and together they went to the police station to bail out Rosa Parks. Both men, and likely Rosa herself, recognized the possibilities of fighting her arrest in the federal court system. In terms of reputation and personal integrity, she was the perfect plaintiff.

Rosa told Nixon and Durr that she needed to consult with her family.  Elevating her case, which otherwise would likely result in a small fine, risked all kinds of unknown repercussions. Her husband Raymond, expressing these fears, said to his wife, “The white folks will kill you, Rosa.” Nevertheless, she agreed to do it, telling Nixon and Durr that she trusted that it would “do some good.”

At this point the story might have followed the pattern of Brown v Board of Education: Rosa’s legal appeal wending its way up the judicial chain of command to arrive, ultimately, at the Supreme Court. But word of Rosa Park’s arrest reached Jo Ann Robinson, an English professor at near-by Alabama State College and the president of the Women’s Political Council, a local African American civic group. Robinson had a plan and she grasped the opportunity presented by Rosa Park’s arrest to execute it. Working surreptitiously through the night at her Alabama State office, she drafted and printed a flyer advocating a one-day boycott of the Montgomery City buses. 

“Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights, too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negroes, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother. This woman’s case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don’t ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don’t ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off all buses Monday.”

In the early hours of Friday morning, which is to say the middle of the night, Jo Ann Robinson called E.D. Nixon to tell him her plan for a bus boycott and seek his approval. He gave it immediately.

[There is some controversy as to who came up with the idea for a boycott. Nixon later claimed he did, or at least did independently of Robinson. In any case he readily gave the plan his full support.]

Montgomery is the second largest city in Alabama and its capital. In 1955 its population was about 134,000, of which one-third was African American. Thus, the proposed one-day boycott would affect approximately 36,000 African Americans who then comprised 75% of city bus riders.

Nixon knew that any plan for mass protest needed the support of the African American clergy, both to give it moral authority and get the word out. Early on Friday morning he started making phone calls. One went to the relatively new minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr. Would King endorse a one-day boycott? And, either way, could Nixon use Dexter Avenue Baptist for a meeting later that day? King immediately consented to the meeting. He asked for time to consider the boycott.

When I listen today to the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr., and I think most Americans know him best by his recorded speeches, I conceive a man older than he was. At the moment he took the phone call from E.D. Nixon, he had just turned 26 years old. A year earlier King had taken the pastoral reins at Dexter Avenue Baptist, described by Taylor Branch as an unusually fractious congregation which chewed pastors up and spit them out a few years later. His first child was two weeks old. He was finishing his doctoral dissertation at Boston University. His life was full to the point of overflowing. Still, he had joined the NAACP and soon thereafter was appointed to the local chapter’s executive committee. 

On Friday afternoon fifty or so black leaders, many of whom were pastors, met at Dexter Avenue Baptist. E.D. Nixon was missing. His job as a Pullman car porter would keep him out of town until Sunday. By then M.L. King had agreed to support the boycott. The meeting, described as somewhat chaotic, endorsed the Robinson-Nixon plan. The various pastors agreed to spread the word at Sunday services. A sub-committee printed another flyer with the addition: “Come to a mass meeting Monday at 7 PM, at the Holt Street Baptist Church for more information.” 

Holt Street Baptist Church

Holt Street Baptist was the largest black church in the city and so was the logical place for a mass meeting. However, no one knew at this point whether Montgomery blacks would honor the boycott on Monday. After all they risked losing their jobs if they couldn’t get to work on time. And if they didn’t boycott…well, there might not be much to talk about on Monday evening. 

Before leaving town on Friday, E.D. Nixon had planted a journalistic seed with the city editor of the Montgomery Advertiser. Sunday it bore fruit in the form of an article about a purportedly top secret plan on the part of Montgomery blacks to boycott buses on Monday and then meet at Holt Street Baptist that evening. Whether Nixon intended this as a shot across the bow of the white community or free advertising for the boycott (or both), I don’t know. Clearly both sides would be watching the buses Monday morning.

Monday sunrise arrived, as they say, with bated breath. Would black Montgomerites stay off buses? It appeared so, perhaps unintentionally abetted by whites picking up black employees rather than go without their services, and the heavy-handed presence of the Montgomery police at bus stops frightening black riders away. The city buses were largely empty.

Rosa Park's Booking Photo

In a brief trial that morning Rosa Parks was convicted and fined $10 with additional $4 court costs. She would appeal. Meanwhile a crowd of 500 or so black supporters had gathered outside the courthouse, apprehensive that she might be mistreated, and making noises that suggested they might come get her if she was.

Given the success of the one-day boycott, another meeting was quickly organized for Monday afternoon to decide how to move forward. Beyond protesting Rosa Park’s arrest, what were the black community’s demands? Should they try to extend the boycott or use it as a threat? Old rivalries flared. E.D. Nixon accused some of the black ministers of hiding behind the skirts of black women, like Rosa, who had repeatedly stepped forward to challenge Jim Crow, “If we’re gonna be mens, now’s the time to be mens.” 

Into what was rapidly becoming a supercharged atmosphere, M.L. King arrived late and replied, “Brother Nixon, I’m not a coward. I don’t want anybody to call me a coward.” 

What happened next is arguably one of the great serendipitous moments of American history. Taylor Branch speculated on the whys and wherefores. Was it, perhaps, the way King quietly and effectively challenged Nixon? Was King just a neutral face, unattached to existing cliques? Or did most of the gathered leaders, all presumably older than King, see the path ahead as more risk than reward? When King’s name was put forward to head the new boycott organization, no one opposed him.

It was 6 PM-ish when M.L. King arrived home to tell his wife the “good news” that he was the newly-elected president of the newly-christened Montgomery Improvement Association (MIP) and seek her blessing (which she generously gave). He had less than an hour to compose his thoughts and get to Holt Street Baptist Church. He was now the keynote speaker.

The crowd that filled and overflowed Holt Street Baptist that night is generally estimated at 5,000 people. Some say it was larger. Parking near the church was out of the question. Loudspeakers were set up outside. M.L. King pushed his way several blocks through the crowd to enter the church.

Earlier the MIP elders had agreed that the size and enthusiasm of the crowd would determine whether to continue the bus boycott. At this point it seemed a foregone conclusion. No sooner had he arrived inside the church then King was introduced to the audience. 

Consider the moment…. As I earlier remarked M.L. King was a young man, barely a year out of university. Born into the black church, he knew its practices and traditions well. At Crozier Seminary and Boston University, he had embraced the Protestant theology of Reinhold Niebuhr. (Later Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama would cite Niebuhr’s influence in their lives.) Despite his relative youth, he was already a skilled preacher. Now he found himself before the largest “congregation” of his life, only this congregation didn’t seek salvation of the soul, it sought to bury the legacy of slavery, and it needed someone to show the way. 

The speech was recorded that night. It can be found onYoutube. It’s 9:26 long. I recommend it to anyone who wishes to experience the moment when a man walks into the history books.

As a rule, black congregations talk back to the preacher. I assume skilled preachers, like King, attend closely to this just-in-time feedback; and use it, to the extent practical, to craft their words and modulate their voice to better connect with the audience. 

M.L. King began speaking in measured phrases. His voice carried well. He explained why they were assembled. He cited democratic and Christian values. He reminded everyone, as if they needed reminded, of the long history of segregation, of which the Montgomery bus incident was just the latest entry. He asserted the legality of both Rosa Park’s actions the previous Thursday and the black community’s that morning. Throughout this phase of the speech the crowd politely responded with “yes, yes” and “that’s right.” He complimented the character and Christian qualities of Rosa Parks. The polite responses continued.

Martin Luther King speaking at Holt Street Baptist Church on March 5, 1955

Then, at the midpoint of his speech, he spoke the words, “And you know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.” The crowd roared to life. Taylor Branch described it as “a giant cloud of noise.” King continued, repeating the phrase “there comes a time…” and then again, “there comes a time…” His voice grew sharper and stronger.

With the crowd now solidly in his camp, he focused on the moral imperative of the proposed boycott: advocating non-violence, championing American democracy with all its faults over a Communist alternative (almost a mandatory statement in the 1950s when any hint of political deviancy was associated with the “Red Menace”), and forewarning the assembly that its actions might falsely be compared to the violent hatred of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils. Over and over King reiterated the rightness of their cause:

“If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie: love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream”

King ended with a plea to the crowd that what comes next would require that they stick together and work together. 

It was a bravura performance. If the black citizens of Montgomery went to this mass meeting wondering what it was about, they left with a purpose, a plan, and a leader.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott would last 381 days and only end after the Supreme Court affirmed in the appeal of Browder v Gayle the unconstitutionality of bus segregation. Still, no one then or now doubts the essential role of a united African American community in bringing about this second major breach of the Jim Crow fortress. Going forward this Christian-based, non-violent form of protest would become the model for civil rights actions throughout the South.

For M.L. King, Jr., life would never return to its pre-boycott normal. He would walk the world’s stage—beloved and despised, it seems, in equal measure—until a .30-06 bullet ripped into his face twelve years later.

A Shot Heard 'Round the World

I freely admit that I have largely ignored Black History month. This year is different. 

The more I learn about African American history, the more I believe that it is an essential piece of the American Story, as fundamental to the understanding of ourselves as a people as the American Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution.

If you need a starting place, try Taylor Branch’s Pulitzer prize-winning “Parting the Waters,” a history of the civil rights movement 1954-63. I first read it in 1988 when originally published and now do so again. It still packs the same punch.

Part I: A Shot Heard ‘Round The World 

In the 1950s “Jim Crow” still prevailed in the South. I don’t know what is taught in school today about Jim Crow. I sense it is glossed over or soft-pedaled so as not to upset the genteel notion that we are God’s-Chosen. To be blunt, Jim Crow was a system of apartheid used to control and subjugate the black population.

The 1954 Supreme Court ruling Brown v Board of Education of Topeka represented one of the first serious inroads against Jim Crow law. At the time it was the model for advancing black civil rights: cherry-pick a cause and a plaintiff, bring suit in federal court, hope like hell the court rules in favor, and then struggle to implement the ruling in the recalcitrant States.

Rosa Parks would change all this on December 1, 1955.

Rosa Parks with Martin Luther King, Jr.
in the background

Almost everyone knows the basic Rosa Park’s story. Tired of always having to move to the back of the Montgomery city buses for white patrons, she finally said “no,” and thus became—justifiably—a folk hero. But this seemingly impulsive act could have easily been forgotten—an arrest, a quick trial, a fine or perhaps a jail term, and a return to the status quo. 

That’s what happened to Claudette Colvin, a 15-year old Montgomery high school girl, who earlier in 1955 had refused her bus seat to a white patron. The local civil rights leadership considered her case. While they judged her actions courageous, they found her character wanting—she was feisty, immature, unwed and pregnant—and decided against taking her case to federal court. 

[Eventually they would reconsider. Colvin became a co-plaintiff in Browder v Gayle, wherein the Supreme Court decided, by upholding a lower court decision, that the City of Montgomery had violated her Constitutional rights.] 

Rosa Parks was something different. She was a seamstress by trade who worked at the Montgomery Fair department store. At the moment she entered history, she was 42 and married to a local barber. She was also the quiet-spoken, diligent secretary of the local NAACP. Taylor Branch described Rosa’s character as “one of those isolated high blips on the graph of human nature.” She was a registered voter in Alabama when this was both rare and difficult for an African American. She was the teacher and mother-figure for the local NAACP Youth Council. Ten years previously in her NAACP capacity she had investigated the gang rape of Recy Taylor by six white men in nearby Abbeville, Alabama, and then initiated the black community’s response—an all-white jury never convicted any of the assailants.  If Rosa was quiet and shy, and that is often reported, she was a lioness when it came to fighting for black civil rights.

Her part-time employers Clifford and Virginia Durr, a white couple who actively supported the local civil rights movement, must have recognized this in her. In the summer of 1955 they sponsored her trip to a desegregation workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. The Highlander Folk School grew out of the social justice movement and in the 50s provided training to many future civil rights leaders. In 1961 the State of Tennessee shut the school down because it didn’t much care for such stuff.

In August of that same year, a 14-year old black boy named Emmett Till was lynched by two white men in Money, Mississippi. Till was visiting Mississippi relatives from Chicago. His “crime” was flirting with the young wife of one of the men. His body, beaten and shot, was pulled from the Tallahatchie River three days after he disappeared. In the September murder trial—injustice moved quickly in those days—no one was convicted. Later, protected by double-jeopardy, the two white defendants admitted they killed Till.

Till’s murder became national news. Every African American in the Deep South would have been talking about it. Rosa Parks later said that Till’s murder weighed heavily on her. 

Approaching that fateful day in December, I speculate that Rosa Parks found herself at the confluence of powerful psychic forces: disappointed that a lifetime immersed in the civil rights struggle had little to show for it, perhaps frustrated that the local black leadership failed to aggressively pursue legal action on behalf of Claudette Colvin, empowered by her recent leadership training at the Highlander Folk School, and, finally, righteously enraged at the awful death of Emmett Till. 

Describing her mindset at the time, she wrote,

 “I am nothing. I belong nowhere.”

There was one more thing: she despised the white bus driver who ordered her to give up a seat to a white patron. His name was James Blake. Twelve years earlier, after paying her bus fare, Blake required Rosa re-enter the bus through the rear door rather than walk down the aisle past the white riders. When she stepped off, Blake drove away. For this long-remembered petty act of humiliation, Rosa later wrote “I never wanted to be on that man’s bus again.” Blake died in 2002 lamenting that he was just a city employee doing his job. With such pathetic justifications is the road to hell paved.

Which brings us to the afternoon of December 1, 1955…. After finishing work Rosa Parks boarded the Montgomery City bus to go home. She was so preoccupied that she failed to notice James Blake was the driver, else she would have waited for the next bus. At a later stop, a white man got on. As there were no more seats available at the front, Blake ordered the four African Americans in the so-called “no-man’s land” to move back. At first no one complied and Blake said “Y’all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats.” The three African American riders in the row with Rosa moved back. Rosa refused, which prompted Blake to say,

 “Well, if you don’t stand up, I’m going to have to call the police and have you arrested.”

To which Rosa Parks replied,

“You may do that.”

I love that—I give you permission and fuck off! at the same time. 

Rosa was a longstanding member of the local NCAAP, but she was not part of its top leadership, nor was she part of black Montgomery’s social elite. She was the good soldier, the dutiful worker bee, one of those essential people who keep the wheels turning and rarely gets invited to parties. Yet Rosa must have instinctively known that her arrest, unlike Claudette Colvin’s nine months before, couldn’t be shunted aside by the Montgomery civil rights leadership. Her action forced the hand of both sides of the racial divide.  

From this point forward, the fight for black civil rights would take place in the streets as much as the court room. Rosa Parks had fired a shot in the air, she just didn’t know how far away it would be heard. It would be heard ‘round the world.