Sam Cooke's music - as a whole - is not necessarily associated that with the Civil Rights movement. Broadly speaking, the image of Sam Cooke in the late 1950s and basically until the year of his death is of the gospel singer gone pop star, with the sacred/profane imagery that went with that.

Cooke actually does not seem to have been particularly galvanised politically in an artistic sense, until Martin Luther King's August 1963 'I Have A Dream' speech, which Cooke saw on television (according to Peter Guralnick's Dream Boogie: The Triumph Of Sam Cooke). At a similar time, Cooke was impressed by the power of Bob Dylan's 'Blowin' In The Wind' (which Peter Paul and Mary performed at the March on Washington event where King gave the speech), and he had been listening to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

'A Change Is Gonna Come' is the civil rights anthem that Cooke wrote and is now very much associated with. However, in 1964, 'A Change Is Gonna Come' was not actually a hit, and so when he passed away, he was not particularly strongly associated with 'A Change Is Gonna Come'. He had first performed on national television in early 1964; however, this was two days before the Beatles performed on Ed Sullivan, causing an outbreak of Beatlemania that well and truly overshadowed anything Cooke did. It seems that Cooke saw 'A Change Is Gonna Come' as something of a failure, a song that was too glum, and he otherwise didn't perform it live through the rest of 1964 until his death.

It was finally released on a 7" single posthumously (Guralnick claims it was released on a compilation charity album called The Stars Salute Martin Luther King but the tracklist for the version of that I can find on the internet doesn't have that song), a couple of weeks after his death. On 7" form, it was the b-side to the a-side 'Shake', which was a #7 single on the Billboard charts; 'A Change Is Gonna Come', as the b-side, was a #31 single. So at the point when Sam Cooke died, he was not a particularly prominent figure in the civil rights movement; he'd watched the March on Washington on television, and was touring in Canada during the 1964 election rather than campaigning.

It's in the posthumous take-up of 'A Change Is Gonna Come' that the song began to be a civil rights anthem; it was covered by Otis Redding in 1965, the Supremes in 1965, and Aretha Franklin in 1967, and several others. As a result, the reaction to Sam Cooke's death wasn't as a civil rights icon; it was as a pop star.

The circumstances of Sam Cooke's death are, according to Dream Boogie, that he met a woman called Elisa Boyer at a showbiz club called Martoni's, and left with her at about 1:30am. He spent an hour driving (while somewhat drunk) to the Hacienda hotel near the LA airport, which he liked because it was cheap, convenient and out of the way of prying eyes (Boyer claims to have been confused and a little upset about this). He got a room at the Hacienda, and once in the room with Boyer, according to her later testimony, he came on a little too strong, and upset her by being a bit too forward, or a bit too rough; as a result, she claimed, she ran out of the room with his clothes while he was in the bathroom. Enraged and a bit drunk, he stormed towards the manager's office, believing that the manager was hiding Boyer from him. He barged the door of the office, according to the manager (one Bertha Lee Franklin, who Guralnick describes as 'dark skinned', which presumably means African American), and began to physically assault her. At one point during the 'awkward wrestling match', she went for the gun, and took three shots, hitting him through the chest and killing him with the third. The police received two calls that night; one from the owner of the hotel, reporting she had heard a scuffle and gunshots in the manager's office, and one from a crying girl in a phone booth claiming she had been kidnapped and taken out to the Hacienda.

Sam Cooke's manager, Allen Klein (yes, the one who later managed the Rolling Stones and the Beatles), upon hearing the news, immediately put out a press release doubting the official story.

The story of Sam's death as reported is impossible...someone is trying to cover up the [real] reasons for this tragedy. Sam was a happily married family man with deep religious convictions...he was not a violent person and the statements given out as to why he was killed are entirely inconsistent with the kind of person he was. Out of respect to Sam and his wife and his children, I would appreciate it if the press would withhold publishing hearsay information.

Allen Klein engaged a private investigator to investigate the people involved in the death. Klein's private investigator concluded, apparently, that Boyer was a 'professional roller' who operated with a confederate and whose modus operandi was to get them naked and then steal their clothes so they could not leave the room. The private investigator did not find any evidence that the hotel manager was in on it; if Boyer really was scamming Cooke, his rage at the manager and subsequent death was an unintended circumstance. Many seemed to believe that Cooke usually carried thousands of dollars in cash on him (though his wife thought this was wrong), and nobody seemed to be able to find that money if that was actually the case. Boyer was arrested on January 11, on separate charges, for prostitution.

There was a coroner's jury hearing on the Wednesday after the death, and Boyer and Franklin were both called to the stand. Boyer claimed that she escaped while he went to the bathroom, and that she "had no idea that someone shot Mr. Cooke". Bertha Franklin's testimony and the testimony of the hotel owner who had rang the police told very similar stories, and both had passed lie detector tests.

At the funeral Muhammad Ali apparently declared loudly and repeatedly that if Sam Cooke had been white "the FBI would still be investigating and someone would be in jail." Cooke's family and friends debated the circumstances of the death, talking about the Mafia or betrayal by those within his domestic circle (Sam Cooke's musical collaborator Bobby Womack married Cooke's widow Barbara very soon after their death, and a member of Cooke's family pistol-whipped Womack in fury in this period). Others pointed out that Sam had a temper and that he would come out charging and would not back down - they could see exactly how the events could have occurred as stated.