Existing surface defects in structural members often act as sites of fatigue crack initiation, and if undetected, these cracks may grow through the thickness of the member, leading to catastrophic failure of the structure. Thus, in-service monitoring of fatigue cracks through reliable and effective nondestructive techniques is an important ingredient in the leak-before-break (LBB) design and safe operation of defects critical structures. An advanced, waveform-based, acoustic emission (AE) technique has been used in this paper to study the characteristics of the signals emanating from the initiation, growth and through-the -thickness penetration of surface fatigue crack in a 6061 aluminum plate. The goal of this experimental study is to determine whether the evolution of the fatigue crocks could be identified from the properties of the waveforms produced during the tests. The AE waveform signals detected at different stages of crack growth was found to have different temporal and spectral characteristics. The data analysis technique presented here can be applied to real-time monitoring of the initiation and propagation of fatigue cracks in structural components.