Mann Act

The United States White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 (ch. 395, 36 Stat. 825; codified as amended at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2421–2424) prohibited white slavery. It also banned the interstate transport of females for “immoral purposes.” Its primary stated intent was to address prostitution, immorality, and human trafficking. The act is better known as the Mann Act, after James Robert Mann, an American lawmaker. While its ambiguous language allowed selective prosecutions for many years, it has been amended by Congress to apply only to actual criminal offenses.

Prosecutions

The most common use of the Mann Act was to prosecute men for having sex with underage women. It was also used to harass others who had drawn the authorities' wrath for "immoral" behavior.

The first person prosecuted under the act was heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, an African-American man. He had an affair with a white prostitute named Lucille Cameron. Johnson married Cameron so that she could not be forced to testify against him. Belle Schreiber, a prostitute who at some point left a brothel and traveled with Johnson to another state, was next in line to testify against him. Johnson was prosecuted and sentenced to the maximum penalty of a year and a day in prison.

Pioneering sociologist William I. Thomas's academic career at the University of Chicago was irreversibly damaged after he was arrested under the act when caught in the company of one Mrs. Granger, the wife of an army officer with the American forces in France. Thomas was acquitted at trial.

British film actor Charlie Chaplin was prosecuted in 1944 by Federal authorities for Mann Act charges related to his involvement with actress Joan Barry. Chaplin was acquitted of the charges, but the trial permanently damaged his public image in the US. The uproar contributed to his departure for Switzerland in the early 1950s.

Canadian author Elizabeth Smart described being arrested under the Mann Act in 1940 when crossing a state border with her lover, the British poet George Barker, in her book By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. She memorably intertwined the callous police interrogation under this law with quotations about love from the Song of Songs.

In the late 1950s, Kid Cann, a notorious organized crime figure from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was prosecuted and convicted under the Mann Act after transporting a prostitute from Chicago to Minnesota. His conviction was later overturned on appeal. Even later, Kid Cann was prosecuted and convicted of offering a $25,000 bribe to a juror at his trial under the Mann Act.

The 1948 Mann Act prosecution of Frank LaSalle for abducting Florence Sally Horner is believed to have been an inspiration for Vladimir Nabokov in writing his novel Lolita. The book's protagonist Humbert Humbert, seeking to escape watchful eyes and bind the girl, Dolores Haze, more closely to him, also conducted a multi-state road trip during the course of the story.

Notable individuals prosecuted under the Act

• Chuck Berry
• Charlie Chaplin
• Finis Dake
• Rex Ingram
• Jack Johnson
• Charles Manson
• William I. Thomas
• Frank Lloyd Wright

Notable individuals investigated under the Act

• Dusan Popov, a World War II Allied spy with a "James Bond" lifestyle, was threatened with arrest under the Mann Act.
• Individuals associated with a prostitution ring that had former Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer as a client.

Mann Act case decisions by the United States Supreme Court

• Hoke v. United States, 227 U.S. 308 (1913). The Court held that Congress could not regulate prostitution per se, as that was strictly the province of the states. Congress could, however, regulate interstate travel for purposes of prostitution or “immoral purposes.”
• Athanasaw v. United States, 227 U.S. 326 (1913). The Court decided that the law was not limited strictly to prostitution, but to “debauchery” as well.
• Caminetti v. United States, 242 U.S. 470 (1917). The Court decided that the Mann Act applied not strictly to purposes of prostitution, but to other noncommercial consensual sexual liaisons. Thus consensual extramarital sex falls within the genre of “immoral sex.”
• Gebardi v. United States, 287 U.S. 112 (1932). The Court held that the statutory intent was not to punish a woman's acquiescence; therefore, consent by the woman does not expose her to liability.
• Cleveland v. United States, 329 U.S. 14 (1946). The Court decided that a person can be prosecuted under the Mann Act even when married to the woman if the marriage is polygamous. Thus polygamous marriage was determined to be an “immoral purpose.”
• Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81 (1955). The Supreme Court decided that simultaneous transportation of two women across state lines constituted only one violation of the Mann Act, not two violations.

Congressional amendments to the law

In 1978, Congress updated the act's definition of "transportation" and added protections against commercial sexual exploitation for minors. It added a 1986 amendment which further protected minors and added protection for adult males. It replaced the ambiguous "debauchery" and "any other immoral purpose" with the more specific "any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense."

Further reading

• Langum, David J. (1994). Crossing over the line. Legislating Morality and the Mann Act. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226468801. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

External links

• Text of the Act, from PBS
• 18 USC 2421, the current version of the law