Clifton L. Taulbert is the president and CEO of the Freemount Corporation, a human capital development company and the president and CEO of Roots Java Coffee, an African American owned national coffee brand that imports coffee from the country of Rwanda. He is a graduate of Oral Roberts University and the Southwest Graduate School of Banking at Southern Methodist University. He is the author of numerous books, including Once Upon A Time When We Were Colored. Clifton has been inducted into the United States Enlisted Airmen Hall of Fame and is also the first African American to win the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Non-Fiction. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.