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Any Other Immoral Purpose: The Mann Act, Policing Women, and the American State, 1900 – 1941

Pliley, Jessica Rae
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1281537489

Abstract Details

2010, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History.
This study explores the White Slave Traffic Act of 1910, commonly known as the Mann Act, a federal law that outlawed taking woman or girl over state lines for the purposes of prostitution, debauchery, or “any other immoral purpose.” It traces the international origins of the anti-white slavery movement; looks at the anti-slavery origins and rhetoric of the anti-white slavery movement; and contextualizes the American anti-white slavery movement in a broader context of American colonial and racial politics. It then examines the Immigration Bureau’s experiments and investigations into white slavery, conceived by the bureau as foreign prostitution, to show how the Immigration Bureau agitated for greater border controls throughout the United States. At the center of this dissertation is the Bureau of Investigation’s enforcement of the White Slave Trafficking Act. Throughout the 1910s bureau agents struggled with how to enforce the statute: was it a law intended to protect young women from nonwhite men or police young women who in the changing sexual culture were increasingly experimenting with sexuality? In the course of the decade, the bureau experimented with ways to expand its reach while trying to contain prostitutes by tracking prostitutes who crossed state lines. When in 1917 the Supreme Court granted a broad reading to the Mann Act, upholding the “any other immoral purpose” clause of the law to cover cases of interstate romantic trysts, the bureau expanded the types of cases it pursued. With the U.S.’s entry into the World War, promiscuity posed a threat to the health and American soldiers who suffered from high rates of venereal disease. As a result, wartime America saw a criminalization of promiscuity that encouraged the harsh policing of young women under the martial rationale of protecting America’s fighting force. Cases during the interwar period show the way the bureau upheld male patriarchal and white racial privileges in cases that dealt with both interpersonal crises and commercial prostitution. The bureau used the Mann Act to bring police pressure on interracial couples. By policing the mobility of women and male respectability the federal government establish a paternalistic model of federal policing. Additionally, as J. Edgar Hoover sought to increase the visibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (and the agency’s appropriations) in the 1930s, he launched a series of high publicity investigation into New York City’s Vice Queens and Lords. These investigations and the subsequent trials resuscitated white slavery narratives of an early era as part of the sensational media coverage. Hoover encouraged this type of coverage because it positioned the bureau as the protector of American family values against those who would profit off of misery, economic devastation, and sexual deviancy. This study joins the many others that point to the gendered nature of the American state and the importance of gendered habits of mind to the growth of the American state.
Susan Hartmann, PhD (Advisor)
Kevin Boyle, PhD (Committee Member)
Paula Baker, PhD (Committee Member)
Anthony Mughan, PhD (Other)
368 p.
African Americans; American History; American Studies; Black History; Criminology; Gender; History; Womens Studies
white slavery; Mann Act; prostitution; women; FBI; Federal Bureau of Investigation; immigration; progressive era; vice; history; sexuality; Jack Johnson; J. Edgar Hoover; BOI; Stanley Finch; sex trafficking; trafficking of women and girls

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Pliley, J. R. (2010). Any Other Immoral Purpose: The Mann Act, Policing Women, and the American State, 1900 – 1941 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1281537489

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Pliley, Jessica. Any Other Immoral Purpose: The Mann Act, Policing Women, and the American State, 1900 – 1941. 2010. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1281537489.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Pliley, Jessica. "Any Other Immoral Purpose: The Mann Act, Policing Women, and the American State, 1900 – 1941." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1281537489

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.