Mann Act
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The Mann Act of 1910 prohibited so-called white slavery - the practice of European girls working in American bordellos. It also banned the interstate transport of females for immoral purposes. Its primary intent was to address prostitution and immorality.
The Mann Act gets its name from James Robert Mann, an American lawmaker.
The law has come under criticism from civil libertarians who feel the law is and undo federal infringement and violates the states’ discretion in setting their own age of consent laws. Some have also charged that enforcement of the law has been racially biased, since many of the more notable people prosecuted have been successful African Americans.
The first person prosecuted under the act was heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, who encouraged a woman to leave a brothel and travel with him to another state. Though he later married the girl, and took her away from a brothel, he was nevertheless prosecuted and sentenced to a year 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, although he was later acquitted in court.