Mann Act

As urban centers industrialized, cities grew, and women found new forms of independence and agency, the attention of some Progressive Era reformers turned toward enforcing morality, specifically that of sex workers. For some, a new, chaotic urban environment threatened female virtue, which therefore had to be protected. Cities in the nineteenth century generally had been accommodating toward brothels or red-light districts, but increased immigration, heightened numbers of women in the workforce, and challenges to traditionally rigid forms of characterization of the family fed a moral panic. Reformers mainly focused on white women, who were portrayed as being coerced into prostitution, as opposed to African American or Asian women in similar circumstances, who were simply considered morally inferior.