This version of "Colored Girls and Boys" is the original edition published in 1921.

The following is from the author of this book:

I knew nothing about Negro history while I was a farmer's boy, but I could never quite rid myself of a feeling that the Colored people in the United States did have a worthy history. I studied the white man's U. S. History from cover to cover and learned all I could from it, but I got no more racial inspiration from it than a white boy would get from studying only a Negro history in which nothing was written about his own racial achievements. So I secretly resolved to immediately begin to quietly and patiently research for American Negro data in order to some day publish a book so that future Colored school children would not be kept in ignorance about their own race history. I felt it was perfectly right and necessary to study the white man's history at the school desks, but if Colored children were not permitted to study the history of their own race at the same desks; it was perfectly right and necessary that Colored children learn about the achievements of their great men and women at their home firesides within their family circles.

So for the benefit mostly of Colored youths, here are the crude results of my boyhood resolutions and manhood efforts after twenty-five years filled with trying discouragements, and bitter disappointments, but also just as full of unswerving determinations, constant hopefulness, upward climbs, ceaseless works and fervent prayers to God to succeed.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THOSE COLORED GIRLS AND BOYS UPON WHOSE NOBLE EFFORTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS WILL REST THE FOUNDATIONS FOR THE FUTURE SUCCESS OF THE NEGRO RACE: AND
TO ALL THOSE WHITE WOMEN AND MEN WHOSE KIND ENCOURAGEMENT OF AND JUST DEALINGS WITH ALL HUMANITY ARE BRINGING ABOUT BETTER UNDERSTANDING AND GREATER COOPERATIONS BETWEEN WHITE AND COLORED PEOPLE.