B. This song is not new to me. I used to sing this song in church on youth Sundays and during black history month. My initial interpretation of the song when I was younger was that although things may be rough in the beginning a change will eventually come. When I listen to this song I always think about how far the black community has come. When Sam Cooke says “It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die ‘cause I don’t know what’s up there, beyond the sky” I related to that because growing up in church when I was younger I always questioned what was up there beyond the sky. With the passing of my mom at 6, I was always curious about what it was really like. 

C. The artist of this song is Sam Cooke, an African American singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur. Cooke originally wrote this song to talk about his struggles and the black community around him. 

D. After reading about why Sam Cooke wrote the song. I have grown to love it more. I have always had a strong connection to this song because the lyrics always spoke to me, but knowing the root of why Sam Cooke chose to say what he said makes me feel motivated and encouraged. My interpretation of the song hasn’t changed. I now feel a different kind of connection towards the song. I would connect both renditions of the song by relating it to the fact that they are both about overcoming struggle. In Lauryn Hill’s rendition of the song, the only thing she changes is the first verse where she sings about how her mother can’t pay the rent but a change is gonna come. She made the lyrics more relatable to her situation. In both versions of the song, the overall message was that a change was going to come. This connection is important because most artists who remake or cover different songs completely change the overall message.

E. In this week’s lecture, we discussed Rhetoric reading and how in order to truly understand what you are reading you have to use integration. Which involves you constructing your meaning and integrating those concepts into your perception and allowing yourself to view the reading in new ways by combining it with your own experience. The lecture is related to this activity because throughout this activity I used integration to get a better understanding of the song. The first thing I did was listen to the song, and then I went in deeper by gathering information on the original artist and getting a better context of why the song was made. I then took my own experiences, related them to the song, and in the end got a better understanding of the song as well connected with it more. 

E. This activity directly relates to the lecture from this week and the Haas/Flower article because it showed and allowed me to build on my interpretations of the song by rhetorical reading. By the activity being set up the way it is, it allowed me to do this in a gradual way that helped me to understand this method of reading better. In class, we talked about how rhetorical reading involves integration which means to construct meaning by integrating the concepts we read into our frame of reference. This is exactly what I did with the song because I already had somewhat of a frame of reference for what the song was about. In the Hass/Flower article, they talked about reading as being a constructive act which means people use different strategies to interpret meaning. I used both integration and constructive reading to interpret and build upon the meaning of this song. 

B. My initial interpretation of the song was that it gives a strong message, saying that the change between the discrimination, oppression, and social injustice that black people are enduring in America needs to end. After reading the lyrics, it deepens my initial feelings towards the song. The lyric "I say brother help me please, but he winds up knockin' me, back down on my knees, oh" made me realize that this song is not only talking about the racial conflict between black and white people in America but also the conflict within the black community. Such as our people killing/fighting one another, whether it is gang-related, domestic violence, or an innocent bystander. I can personally relate to this song because not only have I been discriminated against as a black woman in America, but I have also had friends and family members that got murdered/injured by a person from within my community. 

C. The artist of the original song "A Change is Gonna Come" is Sam Cooke; 1964 is when he released this song, the same year the Civil Rights Act ended segregation. I believe Cooke had stakes in writing this song by observing the time he was in; he wanted to write something that people could relate to and inspire them not to give up. In the 1960's era when Cooke wrote this song, people were being hanged, beaten, wrongfully convicted, and even murdered because of the color of their skin. This song was very significant because these were the years when many civil rights movements and activists fought for change in American. 

D. My feelings, knowledge, and interpretation of the song broaden. I understood the song is not only asking for change about racial injustice but also for unity. My initial response in parts A and B is just as important here as part C because both showed how I got more in-depth through my writing. I not only used the lyrics in the song, but I also used my memories and opinions to answer the questions. I can connect both artists, Lauryn Hill and Sam Cooke, because their both are/were African Americans living in America. When Sam Cooke sang this song to the time Lauryn Hill did is decades apart, they both can relate to being racially discriminated against. Even though laws such as the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act have passed since Sam Cooke wrote "A Change Gonna Come." The fight for equality and social justice for black people in America still continues.

E. This activity is related to the lecture material my Professor talked about this week about rhetorical reading. Though we were only given both versions of the songs and the lyrics, I had to dig deeper to answer the questions.  I had to use my own personal meaning and response to get my point across in my answers. This activity relates to the Haas and Flowers article that reading is constructive. When answering the questions, I had to constantly ask myself "so what" or "why" and figure out how to use inference to draw a conclusion myself.

B. The original artist, Sam Cooke, singing this song was talking about the racial unrest he faces. I alluded to this conclusion because he talks about not being able to go certain places, and struggles with this issue when going to his brother for answers. Although time has passed from him singing this song to the present day I can relate to his exact emotions given the state of racial injustice in America today. Physically reading the lyrics allowed me to create that connection between my experience and his.



C. At that time, Sam Cooke was writing this song during the Civil Rights movement. He wanted to express his feelings during a time of segregation and inequality. The stake for Sam Cooke writing this song now speaks to universal issues of injustice and brutality throughout the world



D. Since I was a little girl, I have grown up knowing this song. Doing this activity has restored my black joy because this song continues to bring me inspiration.All of my interpretations of the song are equally important because they convey the same message. Each of my interpretations address the problem of injustice and inequality in America and around the world. Lauryn Hill and Sam Cooke rendition of “ A Change is Going to Come,” align when speaking to different struggles they face in their upbringing. Lauryn Hill speaks to her mother facing financial issues that affect their living environment.Sam Cooke speaks to the segregation he faces when not being allowed in various spaces. This is a vital connection because it speaks to the truth of their black experience. 



E. This activity has been a direct reflection of this week's learning material because I have learned how to successfully conduct a rhetorical reading. The Haas/Flowers article redirected my thinking on how to comprehend and read materials such as books,news reports, and articles. For such a long time I had been interacting with the text in a way that wasn’t beneficial, but through this activity I was able to understand how to rhetorically read “ A Change is Going to Come by Sam Cooke,”. During this activity, I analyzed the lyrics so that I could find connections while letting the lyrics challenge me to find deeper meaning. Overall, this activity and lecture material from this week have helped my reading and comprehend process.

B. My initial interpretation of the song was her accepting her fate ( whatever that fate may be). I couldn’t help but imagine her or another black person being very depressed by that. But after reading the lyrics, it sounds like this song is more about having suicidal ideations. It makes me extremely uncomfortable to unpack this because of how depression affects my everyday life. The constant feeling of wanting to give up, but also wondering if there is more than what I am currently going through. But no one seems to understand how intense the battle of fighting these feelings can get. 

C. The original songwriter and performer of “A Change Gonna Come” is Sam Cooke. The stakes in writing such a personal and symbolic song were extremely high because the risks of the song not having the right melody could have been detrimental to his career. He could have possibly lost a part of his fanbase, been scrutinized by his audience, and shunned by the music industry. 

D. After learning more about Sam Cooke and his influence to write “A Change Gonna Come”, my interpretation of this song has changed from dealing with internal conflict to dealing with external conflict. Initially, I thought the song was about giving up on life because the artist’s fate was already sealed. But in actuality, it is about the fight against racism and injustice against African Americans. Of course both of these interpretations are important because the context around the performer of the song influenced what I thought the meaning of what the song was about. Since Lauryn Hill is a multi-grammy winning artist and performed the song in 2009, I thought it was related to the pressure of being famous. I believed the pressures of being famous like being followed by paparazzi, always being known by the public, and everything you do being under scrutiny would not want her to live that life anymore, but be forced to. 

However, after learning it was written and originally performed by Sam Cooke, a famous music artist in 1964, I realized the song was about dealing with the hardships of being black in America during the Civil Rights Movement. Now just because both artists do not have the context , each artist's renditions of the song are very melodic. They both extend the verbs such as “go” and “know” and  get louder and perform longer fermatas (the hold of a note) and riffs (to repeat a sequence of notes) throughout the song. 

E. This activity is related to the lecture material from this week because we are practicing how to use rhetorical reading strategies to analyze a text. The tasks in this activity had me pay attention to my emotional response to the performance of each song, research the context of each artist, and synthesize my findings with my own interpretation. At the beginning of this activity, my interpretation was very vague. I didn’t understand why the performance was so depressing and what the depressing melody was about. But as I did more research, I found that this song is related to the civil rights movement and has cultural significance for African Americans. I would have never gotten to that conclusion without engaging with the text.