For our “Sexuality & Gender Studies Now” series, Brian Donovan, a 2000 dissertation fellow of the SSRC’s Sexuality Research Fellowship Program (SRFP), explains how narratives of sex trafficking and coercion have historically been racialized in the United States. Building on his SRFP-funded research on the Progressive Era’s antiprostitution efforts, which were fueled by fears of “white slavery,” he links this racialized rhetoric of the early twentieth century to contemporary messaging on antitrafficking efforts.