RE: region foreground color

[Drew Adams]

> I have switched to use emacs ver.24 and these defaults changed.
> The background color changed to be a blue color and now there 
> is a foreground color of the highlighted text to be white.

I don't see that with `emacs -Q'.  Perhaps your init file loads something that
changes face `region'?

> I tried to revert to old defaults by adding these two lines 
> to my .emacs:
> (set-face-background 'region "LightGoldenrod2") 
> (set-face-foreground 'region "Black")
> 
> So at least now I have the background color set right and the 
> text color is not the annoying white one.
> However, now all the text that is highlighted become black color.

You just set it to Black, so that's not surprising.

> How is it possible to configure emacs to leave the 
> highlighted text in it's original color?

(set-face-foreground 'region nil) ; UNset the foreground

[Of if you use `M-x customize-face region' then just uncheck the box that
specifies a foreground color.  Easy.  No need to know any Lisp.]