Rose Livingston
Rose Livingston (ca. 1876 – December 26, 1975), known as the Angel of Chinatown, was a suffragist who worked to free prostitutes and victims of sexual slavery. With financial and social support from Harriet Burton Laidlaw, she worked in New York City's Chinatown and in other cities to rescue girls from forced prostitution, and helped pass the Mann Act to make interstate sex trafficking a federal crime.
Quotes
editI don't go in to visit these girls and give them a tract and say 'God bless you,' and invite them around to take tea with me. That's not my kind of work. There are some girls that it's nighty hard to help, but there are some little, fresh young things that have just been brought to Chinatown, and that you can sometimes reach in time to save them. Sometimes you can get there before the harm is done. There are 350 white girls in Chinatown now, by friends. I got thirty-seven of them out last year. I once rescued a little bit of a girl who was only 10 years old. That's the sort of work it is. I don't get much help. It seems as though as soon as a cop in Chinatown shows himself to be honest they move him to some other part of town. They don't want honest cops down there. I don't know whose fault it is — Gaynor's or Waldo's or whose — but it makes it mighty hard sometimes. Sometimes they tell me these are bad girls and there's nothing I can do for them. They try to tell me that these girls could escape if they wanted to, but that they don't want to. I tell you it isn't true. I saw a girl running away from a cadet, and she ran almost into a policeman's arms. I was over there in a jiffy. 'Officer,' I said, 'won't you protect this poor girl from this fellow?' and, would you believe it. that policeman just knocked her back into the cadet's arms and watched while he beat her up.
- "How Rose Livingston Works In Chinatown". The New York Times. December 3, 1912.
