White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and Anti-vice Activism, 1887-1917

by Brian Donovan

During the early twentieth century, individuals and organizations from across the political spectrum launched a sustained effort to eradicate forced prostitution, commonly known as "white slavery." White Slave Crusades is the first comparative study to focus on how these anti-vice campaigns also resulted in the creation of a racial hierarchy in the United States. 
 
Focusing on the intersection of race, gender, and sex in the antiprostitution campaigns, Brian Donovan analyzes the reactions of native-born whites to new immigrant groups in Chicago, to African Americans in New York City, and to Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. Donovan shows how reformers employed white slavery narratives of sexual danger to clarify the boundaries of racial categories, allowing native-born whites to speak of a collective "us" as opposed to a "them."  These stories about forced prostitution provided an emotionally powerful justification for segregation, as well as other forms of racial and sexual boundary maintenance in urban America. 
 

Genres: History, Feminism, Race

186 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

I grabbed "White Slave Crusades" from the digital shelf because of my interest in the parallels between the current moral panic regarding women trafficked into forced prostitution and the similar well orchestrated outrage against the "white slave" trade--white women (always white, of course) coerced into brothels by evil Russian Jews, devious Frenchmen and invidious Italians. They were innocent girls from the country lured into corrupt cities with promises of jobs or marriage only to be thrust into degrading commerce with "the worst mobs of Negroes, whites and Chinese in Chicago's slums".

While sex trafficking of women and boys is a real and continuing problem, it pales in comparison to the widespread and much better documented use of forced, often captive, labor in production of the cheap clothing and food (especially chocolate and the ubiquitous additive palm oil) sold in North America and Europe.

Donovan is one of many academics who have produced books on the white slave trade during the Gilded Age and early 20th century and it may not be the best place to start. Donovan's contribution to the discussion is the addition of race as part of the equation including gender, nativist fear of immigration and the social dislocation brought on by rapid industrialization and migration to the cities.

[Jenna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a scholarly monograph arguing for the importance of race in the "panic" over the (supposed) "white slave trade" epidemic in the late 19th-early 20th century. If one just wants an overview of the book, reading the introduction and conclusion will suffice. As the author acknowledges, the study covers similar ground as other studies that consider the slave trade (see Grittner's book/dissertatation White Slavery Myth Ideology) for instance -- the lens of race is the "new" aspect of the study. Not for the casual reader, in my opinion; there are other, more accessible books on history of prostitution or even white slave trade than this one (i.e. City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920 or Uneasy Virtue: The Politics of Prostitution and the American Reform Tradition).

[Lauren Levitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Argues that race and gender/sexuality are mutually constitutive. Kind of boring, but not too long.