Sam Cooke was a lot of things: soul superstar, civil rights champion, whip smart entrepreneur but he was also a serial womanizer with an unbridled libido. On December 11, 1964, Sam Cooke, was shot to death by Bertha Lee Franklin, manager of the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles, CA. Franklin killed Cooke in what was ruled by the courts to be a justifiable homicide due to Cooke’s unruly, drunken behavior that involved him holding another women captive in his hotel room and allegedly raping her earlier in the evening. With full appreciation of the MeToo moment we are currently all living through as a culture, Disgraceland, with fresh eyes, looks into this crime and the successful effort by Sam Cooke’s family and powerful music industry colleagues to salvage his legacy and reputation by personally discrediting his victim.
