The Law That Destroyed What It Saved - June 25, 1910

On June 25, 1910, President Taft signed a law meant to protect vulnerable women from forced prostitution. Within two years, that same law had been used to destroy one of the most famous Black men in America, not for trafficking anyone, but for loving who he chose. The Mann Act, also known as the White Slave Traffic Act, is one of the most morally tangled laws in American history: built on fear, shaped by panic, and weaponized in ways its drafters either never imagined or did. This is the full story.