Date of Award
Fall 12-2015
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
History
Department
History
Major Professor
Mitchell, Mary Niall ph.d
Second Advisor
Mokhiber, James ph.d
Third Advisor
Long, Alecia ph.d
Abstract
When the United States entered World War II, federal officials began planning a war on prostitution and decided to make New Orleans the poster city for reform. New Orleans held a reputation for being a destination for prostitution tin the U.S. A federally appointed group aptly named the Social Protection Division began a repression campaign in militarily dense areas throughout the United States. The goal was to protect soldiers by eliminating the threat from venereal disease carrying prostitutes. The Social Protection Division created a campaign with the New Orleans Health Department and the New Orleans Police Department to repression prostitution. Some in New Orleans, however, tried to undermine these efforts and continue the profitable tradition of prostitution. From 1942-1945, New Orleans became part of the internal war waged by the federal government against women deemed sexually dangerous to protect the patriotic male soldier being sent off to war.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Baffoni, Allison, "“It is the promiscuous woman who is giving us the most trouble”: The Internal War on Prostitution in New Orleans during World War II" (2015). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 2055.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2055
Included in
Cultural History Commons, History of Gender Commons, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Military History Commons, Political History Commons, Social History Commons, United States History Commons
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.