Scarlet Carnation Quotes

“Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says “Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“When you’re a child you believe your parents know a special truth about the world, that they know what is right, and that life unfolds in a predictable manner. “That understanding does not get shaken unless something very dramatic happens. Then you see your parents are fallible humans making imperfect choices given their circumstances. There are no crystal balls like the witch had. In truth we are all much more like the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. We are people pretending we have more skills than we do.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“I hope we’ll get this settled now, so you won’t have to keep up this battle. The Civil War ended fifty years ago. I would have hoped we’d moved past these conversations by now.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“The person you marry has the most significant impact on your life. It’s better to be alone than to be with a man who does not treasure you.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“I don’t believe so. The person you marry has the most significant impact on your life. It’s better to be alone than to be with a man who does not treasure you.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“We get to keep our home, but it allows deeds preventing sales to colored people, Chinese, Japanese, foreigners—anyone they want, I suppose. Only white people will be allowed to buy homes in lovely, new neighborhoods in Oakland. We’ll be forced to live in run-down areas without modern amenities.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“This Santa Fe Improvement Club proposes to make it a crime for any colored family to live in a block where 75 percent of the residents are white.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“It’s better to be alone than to be with a man who does not treasure you.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“May, I know this is not the life you expected. However, it is the life you have. Try to see the joy in it even while you mourn what you’ve lost.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“There is always hope for a better tomorrow; fighting for what matters to you is just as important as winning that fight. And always remember there is love to be found, even in the most painful of circumstances.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“Mrs. Sanger wants women to have the freedom that comes from choosing motherhood,” May argued. “These people want to create a master race.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“May picked a brochure up and read about the dangers of race mixing. Another brochure advocated for forced sterilization for “lunatics, idiots, paupers, epileptics and criminals.” It said these “unfit persons” have reached a vast multitude—“500,000 lunatics, 80,000 criminals, 100,000 paupers, 90,000 idiots, and 90,000 epileptics”—that were a drain on the “sounder population.” They argued that in one generation there would be no need for hospitals or prisons if people with “superior genetics” were the only people allowed to have children.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“May picked a brochure up and read about the dangers of race mixing. Another brochure advocated for forced sterilization for “lunatics, idiots, paupers, epileptics and criminals.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“Their first campaign for the dignity and rights of colored people in Oakland was to end the showing of the picture The Birth of a Nation, which portrayed Negroes as barbarians and only served to raise animosity. President Wilson revealed his prejudice by showing that vile movie as the first moving picture ever to be screened at the White House.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“Enforced motherhood is the most complete denial of a woman’s right to life and liberty.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation

“I was most grateful to have Ishi’s skills as a counterbalance to the eugenicists. Their excessively large booth was very well funded by Kellogg. They advocate for limiting reproduction to the original stock of this nation and forbidding immigration except from Northern Europe. Their dangerous Darwinian argument will lead to forced sterilization.”
― Laila Ibrahim, Scarlet Carnation