Free US Law Dictionary

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.

According to historian Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "racially skewed enforcement of the Mann Act was just one chapter in the history of Jim Crow", the system of primarily state laws in the U.S. that enforced discrimination against African Americans.[1]