More Than a Singer: How Sam Cooke’s Family Built a Legacy After His Death

More Than a Singer: How Sam Cooke’s Family Built a Legacy After His Death

CLARKSDALE, Mississippi — Nicole Cooke-Johnson loaded her car full of children’s books and traveled to her grandfather’s hometown, Clarksdale, Mississippi, for the first time in her life. It was a journey as old and as common as the Great Migration. But her grandfather, Sam Cooke, was no ordinary man.  Cooke, an iconic, groundbreaking recording artist of the 1950s and ’60s, is considered a pioneer of soul music. He is the writer of “A Change Is …