The Women Who Waged War Against Sex Trafficking in San Francisco
By Anna Diamond Smithsonian.com
In the 1870s, San Francisco, and the American West generally, was a hotbed of anti-Chinese sentiment. Spurred by racism, exacerbated by the economic uncertainty of an ongoing recession, the xenophobia manifested itself in discriminatory legislation and violent physical intimidation against Chinese men and women. Anti-miscegenation laws and restrictive policies that prohibited Chinese women from immigrating to the U.S. created a market for human trafficking, which corrupt officials overlooked.
“In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, many women in Chinatown ended up working as prostitutes, some because they were tricked or sold outright by their families,” writes journalist Julia Flynn Siler in her new book, The White Devil’s Daughters. “They were forbidden to come and go as they pleased, and if they refused the wishes of their owners, they faced brutal punishments, even death.”
Motivated by their Christian faith, a group of white women set out to offer the immigrant women a path out of slavery and sex trafficking and, ideally, into what they viewed as good Christian marriages. In 1874, they founded the Occidental Board Presbyterian Mission House and, for the next six decades, more than 2,000 women passed through the doors of the brick building at 920 Sacramento Street, San Francisco.
Carol graduated from Riverside White Cross School of Nursing in Columbus, Ohio and received her diploma as a registered nurse. She attended Bowling Green State University where she received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History and Literature. She attended the University of Toledo, College of Nursing, and received a Master’s of Nursing Science Degree as an Educator.
She has traveled extensively, is a photographer, and writes on medical issues. Carol has three children RJ, Katherine, and Stephen – one daughter-in-law; Katie – two granddaughters; Isabella Marianna and Zoe Olivia – and one grandson, Alexander Paul. She also shares her life with her husband Gordon Duff, many cats, and two rescues.
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I once read that at the turn of the 18th century, one out of five women in what would become these United States earned a living through prostitution. I wonder if that is because of the lack of currency due to the limiting earlier of Colonial Script. And some of Hamilton’s nonsense (thank you Aaron Burr). Being forced into prostitution through economic hardship seems pretty bad as well. No lack of prostitution here in Maryland this very day, I might add.
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