A Change Is Gonna Come — Sam Cooke (1964)

Sam Cooke wrote this song after being refused entry to a whites-only motel in Louisiana in 1963 and released it on December 22, 1964 -- two months after his death at age 33 in a motel shooting. The song's orchestral arrangement by René Hall and Cooke's restrained, aching vocal performance created a civil rights anthem that Martin Luther King Jr. quoted in speeches, and Barack Obama cited it at his 2008 election victory celebration.