This book analyzes writing about black girls in the nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries. It asks why black writers of the period conveyed racial inequality, poverty, and discrimination through the lens of black girlhood; why black writers and activists emphasized certain types of girls; what tropes can be identified in the early literature of black girlhood; and where these girlhood tropes originated. The book draws on sources from some of the earliest black newspapers and on fiction, including the newspaper advice columns of Gertrude Bustill Mossell, Frances E. W. Harper's novel Trial and Triumph, and conduct books for black children. It thus unveils the possibilities for disciplinary intersections between African American literature, print culture, and black girlhood studies. The texts it examines reveal what it refers to as a genealogy of black girlhood.