Smith, Thomas J.
(born: 1871)Thomas J. Smith, born in Ballard County, KY, was principal at the Colored high school in Versailles, KY (1896-1917) while serving as a pastor in Dayton, OH. He was also pastor at Zion Baptist Church in Paris, KY (1912-1917) and served as historian for the Kentucky State Teachers Association (1900-1917).
Smith wrote The Boy Problem in Church, School, and Home, published by State Normal Press in 1903. African American men within the Baptist denomination made it their mission to better guide African American boys and young men for the sake of the race as a whole.
For more see Who's Who in Colored America, 1928-29; and A. M. Hornsby, "The Boy problem: North Carolina race men groom the next generation: 1900-1930," The Journal of Negro History, vol. 86, issue 3 (Summer, 2001), pp. 276-304.