Emma Azalia Hackley (1867-1922) was an African American writer, teacher, singer, and activist. Born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, she began taking piano, voice, and violin lessons at a young age. Despite her light skin and hair color, she refused to pass as white in order to streamline her musical career, preferring instead to put her heritage at the forefront of her personal identity. She graduated from high school in 1886 in Detroit, Michigan, where she had moved with her parents several years prior. While working as an elementary school teacher, she married attorney and newspaperman Edwin Henry Hackley, with whom she would move to Denver, Colorado. There, Hackley founded the Colored Women's League and the Imperial Order of Libyans, taught music to countless African American students, and earned her bachelor's degree from the Denver School of Music. In 1905, she divorced her husband and relocated to Philadelphia, where she worked as musical director for a local Episcopal church. Hackley, who founded the Vocal Normal Institute in Chicago in 1911, was highly regarded as a teacher, working with such artists as Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, and R. Nathaniel Dett. In 1916, she published The Colored Girl Beautiful, an etiquette book for young African American women.

"The beautiful part about the colored race in America, is the future. As a mixed race we are undeveloped. We may become whatever we WILL to become." In The Colored Girl Beautiful, Emma Azalia Hackley envisions the future as an opportunity for African American girls to grow into intelligent, independent young women for whom nothing is impossible.