Messin' with white girls

The Root.com takes an interesting look at a law that could affect this whole Spitzer catastrophe. The Mann Act prohibits transporting across state lines "a woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose." So if prostitutes who are based in New York were meeting him in DC, then that's a crime.

The Mann Act is pretty damn old and in 1910 the government used it to prosecute a Black boxer named Jack Johnson. They hated the fact that he was a heavyweight champion (so better than all the white boxers) and he had penchant for white women. He married two and was cheating on his second wife with another woman when he was charged by the government for violating the man act when he sent his mistress a railroad ticket.

The feds even got some exes of his to testify in court against him (I guess for travelling with them across state lines and screwing them. Premaritally of course. Not that whites and Blacks could get married in most states.) and he was sentenced to one year and a day for his love of white women. He avoided his sentence for awhile, fleeing around the globe with his white fiance, but eventually they caught him and he served his sentence.

Ha. I can't be angry about this. His athletic triumphs lead to race riots after he beat racist asswipe James Jeffried who wanted to prove "a white man is better than a Negro". He lost. So whites went to lynching and beating Black people all over the country. And what does JJ do? He fucks white women. I know, I know: dey wuz tryin' to keep da Black man down, but da Black man shouldn't ignore racial violence and tension by openly preferring white women, using them as trophies. He was a sexist asshole.

To even consider him a hero is ridiculous. So if the Root thought it was making an example of his persecution, it can try again.

I love these moments in Black history.