Watching our crops come in

the long version

Clifton L. Taulbert's third memoir, Watching Our Crops Come In, begins in 1967, when Taulbert, now a young airman, faces the prospect of Vietnam while recognizing a new war blazing in the delta of his youth, a war that tugs at his heart, but his uniform keeps him from the fight for liberty back home. From the Freedom Riders and Martin Luther King, Jr., to Taulbert's own work as a campaign volunteer for Robert F. Kennedy, Watching Our Crops Come In vividly evokes the mood and personalities of the emerging civil rights era. In his hometown, young idealists and old dreamers - from "saints" to "sinners" - register the colored vote. It is the warm, loving wisdom and enduring dreams learned on the front porches of his childhood that carry him through these turbulent times in the fervent belief that tomorrow is the brightest day. Deeply moving and life-affirming, Watching Our Crops Come In captures the ambience of the emerging civil rights era and the spirit of the ordinary people who changed the South.