Congress passes the Mann Act, also known as the White Slave Traffic Act, which was ostensibly aimed at keeping innocent girls from being lured into prostitution, but really offered a way to make a crime out of many kinds of consensual sexual activity. Allegedly, women were brought to America for the purpose of being forced into sexual slavery; likewise, immigrant men were allegedly luring American girls into prostitution.
The Congressional committees that debated the Mann Act did not believe that a girl would ever choose to be a prostitute unless she was drugged and held hostage. The law made it illegal to "transport any woman or girl" across state lines "for any immoral purpose.
Following this decision, the Mann Act was used in all types of cases: someone was charged with violating the Mann Act for bringing a woman from one state to another in order to work as a chorus girl in a theater; wives began using the Mann Act against girls who ran off with their husbands.
The law was also used for racist purposes: Jack Johnson, heavyweight champion of the world, was prosecuted for bringing a prostitute from Pittsburgh to Chicago , but the motivation for his arrest was public outrage over his marriages to white women.
It was amended in and again in ; most notably, the amendments replaced the phrase "any other immoral purpose" with "any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.
