Is Tupelo Honey a Civil Rights song?
I always just thought it was a love song to his wife at the time, Janet Planet.
Me, too, but Cassandra Wilson did a cover of it, and I listened somewhat more intently.
Moved from IMHO to CS.
I’ve always considered this to be two separate songs put together under one banner.
You can stretch to make a connection if you like. You could say that fighting for a better world is part and parcel of his love for Janet, for example. I’ve never found this convincing.
The contrast between the verses takes the sticky sweetness off the song and grounds it in a real world sadness. Sort of like the title Love in the Time of Cholera.
It’s also a 1971 song which places it past the years of greatest agitation in the civil rights movement and squarely in the anti-Vietnam War era.