Rose Livingston

rdf:langString Rose Livingston

rdf:langString Rose Livingston

rdf:langString Rose Livingston

rdf:langString New York, New York, U.S.

rdf:langString Unknown place of birth, although census records indicate she was born in New York

rdf:langString Rose Livingston, speaking at the Metropolitan Temple, 1912

rdf:langString Rose Livingston in 1913

rdf:langString left

rdf:langString Image of Livingston dressed and coifed like a man, 1934

rdf:langString Rescuing victims of sexual slavery

rdf:langString American

rdf:langString Activist, suffragette

rdf:langString Angel of Chinatown

rdf:langString I 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 might 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.

rdf:langString Miss Livingston sets forth the diabolical tactics of white slave rings in this country as she has seen them. She suggests a remedy and sounds a warning to mothers and fathers.

rdf:langString Rose Livingston (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 and other noted suffragettes, as well as the Rose Livingston Prudential Committee, 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. As a young girl, she was reputedly abducted to serve as a sex slave, became an opium addict and, by age 16, had given birth to two children. Livingston was rescued in 1903 and initially thought that she wanted to work overseas as a missionary. She realized, though, that there was much good that she could do in New York. She referred to herself as a missionary and worked nights looking for pre-teen and teenage girls who were forced into sexual slavery. A small and thin woman, she was beaten and shot, sometimes spending months in the hospital recovering from her injuries. Once she rescued girls, she helped them transition into a life of freedom. She lectured about the dangers of children and young women being forced into sex work. She also advocated for women's suffrage, i.e. the right to vote. It must be noted that the account of her childhood spent as a sex slave comes from Rose herself, and there is a conspicuous lack of confirmation of it from other sources, and various small discrepancies in her own accounts. For example, she never refers again to the two children she claimed she bore.

rdf:langString Angel of Chinatown