Re: White Slavery in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

[KoOks of San Francisco]

In article <t1lkfu$34868$2...@news.freedyn.de>
<governo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Modern day lazy unaffected niggers do not deserve any fucking reparations.
> They didn't give one flying fuck about any possible slave shit until money was waved.
>

From the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, Tijuana,
Baja California, Mexico maintained a reputation as a vice
capital. Americans flocked to the city for drinking, gambling,
and prostitutes. Additionally, white women from the American
West, especially southern California, became increasingly aware
of the lax laws regarding prostitution and sought the safety of
the city. Morality laws in the United States created increased
difficulty for women who were in the world’s oldest profession,
so they moved south of the border. Naturally, this created more
concern and famously the Mann Act(s) were passed by the United
States Congress, thereby prohibiting the transport of women into
the United States or across state lines “for the purpose of
prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose, or
with the intent and purpose to induce, entice, or compel such
woman or girl.” [1] The Mann Act(s) was also known as the White
Slave Traffic Act, the first act was concerned with immigrant
women being brought into the United States for prostitution and
the second concerned American women being transported across
state lines for prostitution. The passage of these acts
emphasized the growing concern with morality and culturally
appropriate behavior.

In this paper, I am asserting that Americans who were concerned
and outraged about the possible disintegration of traditionally
held beliefs regarding women, race, and sex in the United States
painted prostitutes as victims of white slavery. Yet, this
narrative was not supported by many of the women that engaged in
prostitution. Additionally, the paper will underscore the impact
of race and ethnicity on this issue. Miscegenation was taboo at
best for most Americans during this period. And finally, this
paper will address the link between white slavery and
prostitution and the development of border control policies.
Border regulation was inextricably linked to the prostitution
along the U.S.-Mexico border. In general, this paper is an
examination of social and cultural norms of the late nineteenth
and twentieth centuries in America and how those norms impacted
the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

The 1910 passage of the Mann Act allowed the US government to
legislate morality and define and criminalize behavior that was
deemed immoral. While the original target of the law was
prositution, the vague language of “debauchery” and “immoral
purposes’’ allowed the law to be interpreted in a much more
broad fashion. Thus, people engaging in consensual,
noncommercial sexual relationships were prosecuted for violating
the act. This broad interpretation of the law was upheld in
Caminetti v. United States, 1917 which established the “the
plain meaning rule” with Justice William Day writing in the
opinion, “When the language of a statute is plain and does not
lead to absurd or impracticable results, there is no occasion or
excuse for judicial construction; the language must be accepted
by the courts as the sole evidence for the ultimate legislative
intent, and the courts have no function but to apply and enforce
the statute accordingly.” [2] Additionally, the vague language
and interpretation of the law easily allowed for the arrest and
prosecution of heavyweight boxer, Jack Johnson.

For white Americans in the early twentieth century, Jack Johnson
was representative of a Black man not knowing his proper place
in society. He was a champion boxer who defeated white men, and
most notably and controversially, had public relationships with
white women. This was incredibly taboo for the time period and
ultimately led to him being prosecuted under the Mann Act. He
was prosecuted for transporting a woman across state lines, but
it is impossible to separate the issue of race because he was
Black and she was white. Men like Johnson represented the
possible issues from urbanization and immigration that could
develop over time: the possibility of interracial relationships.
The Mann Act and the overall concern with white slavery
reflected concerns of moral debasement and societal decline.
Morality legislation was viewed as a way to fix those problems.
Coinciding with this, white women were viewed as vulnerable [3]
and pure so they would need to be protected from dangerous men
of a different race. With the concern of white slavery came the
narrative that women were abducted so they would need to be
protected. These concerns and ideas contributed to the
victimization of white women due to them being forced to give up
their most prized possession, their sexual purity. [4] But, the
false victimization and morality legislation is what drove women
to Tijuana in order to pursue legal prostitution.

However, when examined more closely, the victimhood narrative
did not necessarily hold up according to many of the women who
were perceived as white slaves. In “The Selling of American
Girls: Mexico’s White Slave Trade in the California Imaginary,”
Catherine Christensen Gwin breaks apart the narrative of white
slavery as a whole and the supposed victimhood of the women.
Following the passage of California’s Red Light Abatement Act,
many women left California for Baja California, Mexico in order
to make money through prostitution without legal problems. [5]
The morality legislation crackdowns led to the development of
Tijuana as a vice haven and locale for prostitutes. There, women
who worked as prostitutes had protections, and prostitution was
regulated as a legitimate occupation. As Christensen Gwin
identifies in two of her works, women who fled to Baja
California had more lucrative opportunities working in vice
resorts and establishments south of the border than in the
United States. [6] Esteban Cantú, governor of the Northern
District of Baja California, wanted to capitalize on the
reputation of northern Baja California as a vice haven by
institutionalizing the “economies of vice by selling
‘entertainment…’” [7] Tijuana provided working women better
financial and social opportunities than the United States did.
The abolishment of brothels in the U.S. did put women at risk of
danger, but the regulated market and legal status of
prostitution in Mexico provided women with a level of security.
This directly negates the notion that women who were prostitutes
that moved south of the border were ensnarled in white slavery
and were being subjected to unspeakable horrors by men as
proclaimed by Roger Bell, et. al in Fighting the Traffic in
Young Girls or War on the White Slave Trade.

Grace Peña Delgado asserts that the flight of American
prostitutes to Tijuana and the rise in morality legislation led
to the development of border patrol and border control. Policing
the U.S.-Mexico border was a method to eradicate the white slave
trade. Prior to 1907, immigration law and morality laws did not
have much intersection. [8] The Immigration Act of 1907
prohibited women from entering the United States for
prostitution. The immigration legislation of the United States
was shrouded in the racism of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, but, coupled with the morality legislation of the
same time period, the attempt was to keep America pure and in
compliance with traditionally accepted forms of morality. The
combination of legislation, policing, and the language and
concern around white slavery was able to reinforce social and
cultural boundaries. [9] If white American women were in
compliance with the morality legislation of the early twentieth
century then fears of miscegenation (as in the case of Jack
Johnson) would be diminished. Additionally, the amount of non-
white people coming into the United States and potentially
mixing with whites would be lowered.

The push for border control can also be linked to the language
that was prevalent in discussions of white slavery and played
into Americans’ fears. The term “white slavery,” was propaganda
itself. It was used to describe women who were involuntary
prostitutes. [10] The term was sensationalized as “The Greatest
Crime in the World’s History,” as put by Ernest Bell. [11] As
previously mentioned, the belief was that young girls and women
were being abducted and sold into slavery. This was a marketable
claim that instilled fear and concern in Americans. This fear
led to support for an agency to specifically focus its efforts
on mitigating such a possibility. Delgado explains that
eventually, the United States joined an international treaty
aimed at fighting white slavery, “But it was not until 1905, at
the urging of American anti-white slavery activists, that the
United States adhered to some of the treaty’s protocols by
designating the Bureau of Immigration as the principal agent to
detect and scrutinize alleged prostitutes—and whenever such
trade was suspected, deny the entry of these women.” [12] And
while this depiction was often of foreign women as voluntary
prostitutes who could be denied entry into the United States,
that was not the case for American women who were seen as
victims. This was due to the association of white women and
purity which was not associated with Mexican or Asian women in
the same way as it was with white, American women who were
thought to be vulnerable, naive, and in need of protection. “The
concept of volition was also lost or at least obscured in the
rhetoric of Braun and other morals purity advocates who often
conflated prostitution, a voluntary practice, with the
involuntary sex trafficking of women and girls. Immigration
inspectors trying to make sense of prostitution and the mandate
to enforce white-slave laws often fused the two ideas.” [13]

The victimization of white women in the context of prostitution
can be relayed back to beliefs of white women’s purity and
importance in state-making. [14] Thus, protecting the purity of
white American women through immigration and morality could have
also been viewed as protecting America itself. If American women
weren’t subjected to abduction and migration to a foreign
country, then America could flourish and be safe. The
combination of language and imagery of white slavery was
powerful and relevant for Americans in the early twentieth
century. In Figure 4 an image from Fighting the Traffic in Young
Girls is shown with a caption that mentions “dens of shame.”
[15] At that time shame would have referred to young women
losing their virginity and dignity by having been involved in
white slavery. Protecting and keeping young white women safe and
virginal was a culturally significant practice that many
Americans supported, thus allowing for the government to
strengthen immigration law and border patrol.

White slavery was a bane on the American conscience during the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Horrified that
young women were being sold down a pipeline of miscegenation and
immorality, Americans rallied support behind immigration and
morality legislation. Controlling the movement of people through
the Mann Act and the types of people who could enter the country
through several immigration acts were implemented to undermine
the plague of white slavery. Yet, what many at the time failed
to realize what that white slavery and prostitution were not
inherently the same thing. Americans conflated the two and the
rise in legislation led to the flight of American prostitutes to
Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. There, these women were
provided legal protections and increased financial
opportunities. However, the language and imagery in America was
depicting the women as being forcibly taken and exploited
against their will. This belief could be related back to the
importance and adoration of white women’s purity and the
development of the United States. Protecting American women and
girls from harmful foreigners was also protecting America as a
whole. Vice establishments and prostitution were viewed as a
stain on the morality of America and could pose a danger to such
a great nation. As seen in figure 5, vice establishments were
believed to be a danger to the public and degrading to American
society. Therefore, legislation and policing were viewed as the
way to stop the plague on American society.

Cite this Page
Marissa Gaspard Williams, “White Slavery in the U.S.-Mexico
Borderlands,” HistoricalMX, accessed March 14, 2023,
https://historicalmx.org/items/show/199.
Related Sources
[1] White Slave Traffic Act of 1910, Pub. L. No. 61-277, 36
Stat. 825 (1910).
[2] Caminetti v. United States 242 U.S. 470 (1917).
[3] Kelli Ann McCoy, “Claiming Victims: The Mann Act, Gender,
and Class in the American West, 1910-1930s,” (PhD diss.,
University of California, San Diego, 2010), 9.
[4] McCoy, 28.
[5] Catherine Christensen Gwin, “The Selling of American Girls:
Mexico’s White Slave Trade in the California Imaginary,”
California History 99, no. 1 (January 2022): 33, doi:
10.1525/ch.2022.99.1.30.
[6] Gwin, “The Selling of American Girls,” 35; Christensen,
“Mujeres Públicas: American Prostitutes in Baja California, 1910-
1930,” Pacific Historical Review, 82, no. 2 (May 2013): 221,
doi:10.1525/phr.2013.82.2.215.
[7] Catherine Christensen, “Mujeres Públicas,” 221.
[8] Grace Peña Delgado, “Border Control and Sexual Policing:
White Slavery and Prostitution Along the U.S.-Mexico
Borderlands, 1903-1910,” Western Historical Quarterly, vol. 43,
no. 2 (Summer 2012): 161, doi: 10.2307westhistquar.43.2.0157.
[9] Brain Donovan, White Slave Crusades: Gender, Race, and Anti-
Vice Activism, 1887-1917, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2006), 3.
[10] Vern L. Bullough, “White Slavery,” in The Oxford
Encyclopedia of the Modern World, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008,
https://www.o
xfordreferenc
e.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195176322.001.0001/acref-
9780195176322-e-1712.
[11] Ernest A. Bell, Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls or War
on the White Slave Trade (Chicago, 1910; Project Gutenberg,
2008), https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26081/26081-h/26081-
h.htm#https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26081/26081-h/26081-h.htm#.
[12] Delgado, “Border Control and Sexual Policing,” 161.
[13] Delgado, “Border Control and Sexual Policing,” 163.
[14] Gwin, “The Selling of American Girls,” 39.
[15] Bell, Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls, chap. 10.
Thank you to Ms. Kristina Claunch from Newton Gresham Library
for her assistance in finding source material. And, thank you
very much to Dr. Charles Heath on his guidance and patience in
helping me to write this paper.

<https://historicalmx.org/items/show/199>

[KoOks of San Francisco]

In article <t1tht5$38pq4$1...@news.freedyn.de>

<https://historicalmx.org/items/show/199>