Combs’ lawyers claim that “no white person has ever been the target of a remotely similar prosecution.” This is an untrue claim that ignored the prosecution of white celebrities and also white defendants in RICO/sex trafficking cases.

But what about Jack Johnson? Federal authorities certainly did use the Mann Act to target Johnson, a world-renown heavy weight champion who fearlessly flaunted his romantic relationships with white women.

Second, enforcement of the run-of-the-mill Mann Act cases from 1910 to 1941 shows that Black girls and women rarely were afforded the protection the Mann Act offered white girls and women.

First, the narratives of white slavery were certainly racialized, imagining as they did only white victims, while ignoring the sexual exploitation of women and girls of color. These narratives shored up white supremacy and justified a crackdown on immigrants and poor communities of color.

In 1917 SCUTUS endorsed a broad reading of the clause, ruling that “any other immoral purpose” meant just what it said. This decision opened the door for investigating cases of interstate adultery, bigamy, rape, in addition to the fundamental purpose of cracking down on interstate prostitution.

Anti-vice reforms began demanding that cities crackdown on their sex districts. Attorneys in Ilinois pointed out that prostitution was a mobile occupation and that anytime a city “cleaned up” is sex district, women who sold sex merely moved to another city to ply their trade.

Usually, these men were imagined to be Jewish, French, or Italian; and occasionally they were imagined to be Black.

The white slavery scare, prominent in pop culture from 1907-1914, brought together these anxieties. Antivice reformers argued that white girls were vulnerable to the predations of strange men they met in the city. These predators were imagined to seduce, trick, or force girls into the sex trades.

The Mann Act emerged in 1910 at a moment when white supremacy shaped life in the US. There was fear among white elites about the problems of Northern city life—poverty; corrupt city governments and vice; and high rates of migration from Eastern and Southern Europe and Black migration to the North.

They argue that the White Slave Traffic Act, aka the Mann Act, is a racist law that has been used to target Black men. They point to the prosecution of Jack Johnson, and Trump’s pardoning of Johnson in 2018. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Sean “Puffy” Combs’ lawyers have cited my book in their attempts to get RICO and sex trafficking charges dropped for hiring escorts and transporting them over state lines so they could participate in Combs’ “freak offs.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/a...