Ellie Kemper Photo: Amanda Edwards/Getty Images Another day, another main character on Twitter. Today’s focus? Ellie Kemper or, rather, Ellie Kemper in 1999, when she was crowned the Queen of Love and Beauty at St. Louis’s Veiled Prophet ball. That sentence is … a lot, so please take a moment to process.
People on Twitter were quick to call out the very questionable origins of the Veiled Prophet ball, or VP, with many referring to this 2014 Atlantic investigation into the organization and its history. Here’s what to know about the VP’s inception and the backlash against Kemper. The next year, the Veiled Prophet Organization was founded by brothers Alonzo and Charles Slayback, a confederate colonel and a confederate cavalryman, respectively. They envisioned a “secret society” of wealthy St. Louisans — self-styled “city fathers” — as a means “to reinforce the values of the elite on the working class of the city,” as Scott Beauchamp wrote in his Atlantic report.
But even if the ties between the Veiled Prophet Organization and the KKK are not explicitly confirmed, the Klan’s history of power in St. Louis is. And then, the Veiled Prophet Organization was a “whites only” organization for over 100 years, barring Black Americans from membership until 1979. It also barred Jewish people from joining until recent decades, and in 1987, its members lobbied the St. Louis Police Department to shut down the Eads Bridge to bar “East Side street gangs” from East St.
Kkkimi Schmidt damnit
So basically, all Democrats should be terminated from their jobs for being a member of a party that supported slavery, KKK, lynching, Jim Crow.....