The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration
The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration

Author: Thomas M. Spencer

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2000-04-11

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0826262279

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The Veiled Prophet organization has been a vital institution in St. Louis for more than a century. Founded in March 1878 by a group of prominent St. Louis businessmen, the organization was fashioned after the New Orleans Carnival society the Mystick Krewe of Comus. In The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration, Thomas Spencer explores the social and cultural functions of the organization's annual celebration—the Veiled Prophet parade and ball—and traces the shifts that occurred over the years in its cultural meaning and importance. Although scholars have researched the more pluralistic parades of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, very little has been done to examine the elite-dominated parades of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This study shows how pluralistic parades ceased to exist in St. Louis and why the upper echelon felt it was so important to end them. Spencer shows that the celebration originated as the business elite's response to the St. Louis general strike of 1877. Symbolically gaining control of the streets, the elites presented St. Louis history and American history by tracing the triumphs of great men—men who happened to be the Veiled Prophet members' ancestors. The parade, therefore, was intended to awe the masses toward passivity with its symbolic show of power. The members believed that they were helping to boost St. Louis economically and culturally by enticing visitors from the surrounding communities. They also felt that the parades provided the spectators with advice on morals and social issues and distracted them from less desirable behavior like drinking and carousing. From 1900 to 1965 the celebration continued to include educational and historical elements; thereafter, it began to resemble the commercialized leisure that was increasingly becoming a part of everyday life. The biggest change occurred in the period from 1965 to 1980, when the protests of civil rights groups led many St. Louisans to view the parade and ball as wasteful conspicuous consumption that was often subsidized with taxpayers' money. With membership dropping and the news media giving the organization little notice, it soon began to wither. In response, the leaders of the Veiled Prophet organization decided to have a "VP Fair" over the Fourth of July weekend. The 1990s brought even more changes, and the members began to view the celebration as a way to unite the St. Louis community, with all of its diversity, rather than as a chance to boost the city or teach cultural values. The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration is a valuable addition not only to the cultural history of Missouri and St. Louis but also to recent scholarship on urban culture, city politics, and the history of public celebrations in America.

The St. Louis Commune Of 1877
The St. Louis Commune Of 1877

Author: Mark Kruger

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2021-10

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 1496228928

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Following the Civil War, large corporations emerged in the United States and became intent on maximizing their power and profits at all costs. Political corruption permeated American society as those corporate entities grew and spread across the country, leaving bribery and exploitation in their wake. This alliance between corporate America and the political class came to a screeching halt during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, when the U.S. workers in the railroad, mining, canal, and manufacturing industries called a general strike against monopoly capitalism and brought the country to an economic standstill. In The St. Louis Commune of 1877 Mark Kruger tells the riveting story of how workers assumed political control in St. Louis, Missouri. Kruger examines the roots of the St. Louis Commune--focusing on the 1848 German revolution, the Paris Commune, and the First International. Not only was 1877 the first instance of a general strike in U.S. history; it was also the first time workers took control of a major American city and the first time a city was ruled by a communist party.

Unveiling the Prophet
Unveiling the Prophet

Author: Lucy Ferriss

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0826264913

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In the autumn of 1972, Lucy Ferriss, then a college student in California, was preparing for the Veiled Prophet Ball at which she was to be presented to St. Louis society. Once the largest cotillion in the country, the invitation-only ball was unique among society events not only for the legend and mystery surrounding its namesake but also for its setting in a public, taxpayer-funded arena and for its accompanying parade. In the late sixties and early seventies, with racial tensions at a boiling point and urban renewal failing, the exclusively white male Christian membership of the Veiled Prophet Society and the Veiled Prophet's costume--eerily reminiscent of a Klansman's--attracted the ire of ACTION, a militant civil rights group. Before the 1972 ball, ACTION founder Percy Green, himself a native St. Louisan, sent letters inviting all of the debutantes to join in the protest: "ACTION understands that you hate being part of this upcoming white racist Veiled Prophet Ball as we hate you being forced to participate by your parents." The letter didn't persuade Ferriss, who felt she owed it to her father to participate. She wrote back: "Don't you have bigger fish to fry? This is just a stupid party. We are slaughtering people in Southeast Asia. Let this one go. It will fall of its own weight." But ACTION did not let this one go. On the night of the ball, as Ferriss bowed in obeisance to the crowd and took her place on the stage, a woman swooped down onto the stage and knocked off the Veiled Prophet's hat and veil, revealing his identity. In the era of monumental Vietnam War protests, unmasking a wealthy and powerful old man might have seemed a feeble act of revolution, but this act forever changed the Veiled Prophet Ball in St. Louis. Ferriss's memoir blends regional history, national history, and her own personal history to create a fast-paced narrative that follows two time lines. One is the dramatic and often funny story of her attending the exclusive ball, having eaten half a pan of marijuana brownies beforehand, with a Jewish hippie who smelled of "unwashed beard." The other story takes place thirty years later as Ferriss returns to St. Louis from her home on the East Coast to track down some of ACTION's principal activists as well as key figures in the Veiled Prophet Society. Over the course of this engaging story, Ferriss undergoes her own unveiling, as she discusses and comes to terms with her family; the past, present, and future of St. Louis; and the cultural politics that frame young women's entrance into society.

My Squirrel Days
My Squirrel Days

Author: Ellie Kemper

Publisher: Scribner

Published: 2019-07-02

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1501163353

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Comedian and star of The Office and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and host of The Great American Baking Show Ellie Kemper delivers a hilarious, refreshing, and inspiring collection of essays “teeming with energy and full of laugh-out-loud moments” (Associated Press). “A pleasure. Ellie Kemper is the kind of stable, intelligent, funny, healthy woman that usually only exists in yogurt commercials. But she’s real and she’s all ours!” —Tina Fey “Ellie is a hilarious and talented writer, although we’ll never know how much of this book the squirrel wrote.”—Mindy Kaling Meet Ellie, the best-intentioned redhead next door. You’ll laugh right alongside her as she shares tales of her childhood in St. Louis, whether directing and also starring in her family holiday pageant, washing her dad’s car with a Brillo pad, failing to become friends with a plump squirrel in her backyard, eating her feelings while watching PG-13 movies, or becoming a “sports monster” who ends up warming the bench of her Division 1 field hockey team in college. You’ll learn how she found her comedic calling in the world of improv, became a wife, mother and New Yorker, and landed the role of a bridesmaid (while simultaneously being a bridesmaid) in Bridesmaids. You’ll get to know and love the comic, upbeat, perpetually polite actress playing Erin Hannon on The Office, and the exuberant, pink-pants-wearing star of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. If you’ve ever been curious about what happens behind the scenes of your favorite shows, what it really takes to be a soul cycle “warrior,” how to recover if you accidentally fall on Doris Kearns Goodwin or tell Tina Fey on meeting her for the first time that she has “great hair—really strong and thick,” this is your chance to find out. But it’s also a laugh-out-loud primer on how to keep a positive outlook in a world gone mad and how not to give up on your dreams. Ellie “dives fully into each role—as actor, comedian, writer, and also wife and new mom—with an electric dedication, by which one learns to reframe the picture, and if not exactly become a glass-half-full sort of person, at least become able to appreciate them” (Vogue.com).

Ritual America
Ritual America

Author: Craig Heimbichner

Publisher: Feral House

Published: 2012-03-06

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1936239159

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"Adam Parfrey is one of the nation's most provocative publishers."—Seattle Weekly "Secret society historian Craig Heimbichner follows the Middle Path to wisdom. He works the graveyard shift in the secret lodge."—Joan d'Arc, Paranoia magazine Secret societies—now a staple of bestseller novels—are pictured as sinister cults that use hooded albinos to menace truth-seekers. Some conspiracy books claim that fraternal orders are the work of serpentine aliens and interbred humans who wish to supplant earth of its energy, and later, its very existence. On the other side of the aisle, books by high-ranked Freemasons—skeptical in tone but no less partisan in approach—protect their organization's public image by denying the existence of its most contentious ideas. Ritual America reveals the biggest secret of them all: that the influence of fraternal brotherhoods on this country is vast, fundamental, and hidden in plain view. In the early twentieth century, as many as one-third of America belonged to a secret society. And though fezzes and tiny car parades are almost a thing of the past, the Gnostic beliefs of Masonic orders are now so much a part of the American mind that the surrounding pomp and circumstance has become faintly unnecessary. The authors of Ritual America contextualize hundreds of rare and many never-before printed images with entertaining and far-reaching commentary, making an esoteric subject provocative, exciting, and approachable. Adam Parfrey is the author of Cult Rapture: Revelations of the Apocalyptic Mind and It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps. He is editor of the influential Apocalypse Culture series Love, Sex, Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment. Craig Heimbichner has recently appeared on a National Geographic documentary about the Bohemian Grove, contributed to the Feral House compilation Secret and Suppressed II, and wrote about the famous occult order the O.T.O. in Blood and Altar.

Grassroots at the Gateway
Grassroots at the Gateway

Author: Clarence Lang

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2010-04-23

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0472026542

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"This is a theoretically sophisticated and thoroughly documented historical case study of the movements for African American liberation in St. Louis. Through detailed analysis of black working class mobilization from the depression years to the advent of Black Power, award-winning historian Clarence Lang describes how the advances made in earlier decades were undermined by a black middle class agenda that focused on the narrow aims of black capitalists and politicians. The book is a major contribution to our understanding of the black working class insurgency that underpinned the civil rights and Black Power campaigns of the twentieth century." ---V. P. Franklin, University of California, Riverside "A major work of scholarship that will transform historical understanding of the pivotal role that class politics played in both civil rights and Black Power activism in the United States. Clarence Lang's insightful, engagingly written, and well-researched study will prove indispensable to scholars and students of postwar American history." ---Peniel Joseph, Brandeis University Breaking new ground in the field of Black Freedom Studies, Grassroots at the Gateway reveals how urban black working-class communities, cultures, and institutions propelled the major African American social movements in the period between the Great Depression and the end of the Great Society. Using the city of St. Louis in the border state of Missouri as a case study, author Clarence Lang undermines the notion that a unified "black community" engaged in the push for equality, justice, and respect. Instead, black social movements of the working class were distinct from---and at times in conflict with---those of the middle class. This richly researched book delves into African American oral histories, records of activist individuals and organizations, archives of the black advocacy press, and even the records of the St. Louis' economic power brokers whom local black freedom fighters challenged. Grassroots at the Gateway charts the development of this race-class divide, offering an uncommon reading of not only the civil rights movement but also the emergence and consolidation of a black working class. Clarence Lang is Assistant Professor in African American Studies and History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Photo courtesy Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri, St. Louis

Bone Broth
Bone Broth

Author: Lyndsey Ellis

Publisher:

Published: 2022-06-07

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9781736551943

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After the passing of a volatile patriarch, one Black family navigates social and familial issues in order to survive.

The Missouri Mormon Experience
The Missouri Mormon Experience

Author: Thomas M. Spencer

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2010-03-05

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 0826272169

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The Mormon presence in nineteenth-century Missouri was uneasy at best and at times flared into violence fed by misunderstanding and suspicion. By the end of 1838, blood was shed, and Governor Lilburn Boggs ordered that Mormons were to be “exterminated or driven from the state.” The Missouri persecutions greatly shaped Mormon faith and culture; this book reexamines Mormon-Missourian history within the sociocultural context of its time. The contributors to this volume unearth the challenges and assumptions on both sides of the conflict, as well as the cultural baggage that dictated how their actions and responses played on each other. Shortly after Joseph Smith proclaimed Jackson County the site of the “New Jerusalem,” Mormon settlers began moving to western Missouri, and by 1833 they made up a third of the county’s population. Mormons and Missourians did not mix well. The new settlers were relocated to Caldwell County, but tensions still escalated, leading to the three-month “Mormon War” in 1838—capped by the Haun’s Mill Massacre, now a seminal event in Mormon history. These nine essays explain why Missouri had an important place in the theology of 1830s Mormonism and was envisioned as the site of a grand temple. The essays also look at interpretations of the massacre, the response of Columbia’s more moderate citizens to imprisoned church leaders (suggesting that the conflict could have been avoided if Smith had instead chosen Columbia as his new Zion), and Mormon migration through the state over the thirty years following their expulsion. Although few Missourians today are aware of this history, many Mormons continue to be suspicious of the state despite the eventual rescinding of Governor Boggs’s order. By depicting the Missouri-Mormon conflict as the result of a particularly volatile blend of cultural and social causes, this book takes a step toward understanding the motivations behind the conflict and sheds new light on the state of religious tolerance in frontier America.

The Other Missouri History
The Other Missouri History

Author: Thomas Morris Spencer

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0826264301

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The essays in The Other Missouri History explore a wide range of topics in Missouri social history. By dealing with the lives of ordinary Missourians, these pieces examine the effects of significant social and economic change at all levels of society. With a broader scope in Missouri history than previous studies, this book demonstrates how Missourians have been affected by issues of race, class, and gender. Gregg Andrews's essay, "The Racial Politics of Reconstruction in Ralls County, 1865-1870," examines how race shaped the political culture in Ralls County during the Reconstruction Era. Andrews argues that race-baiting was used prominently by editors of the Ralls County Record to discredit Radicals in the county and was perhaps the most powerful political weapon that conservatives and later Democrats could use to gain the allegiance of voters. Farmers are another popular topic for those practicing the "other Missouri history." Michael J. Steiner's "The Failure of Alliance/Populism in Northern Missouri" provides insight into the economic and rhetorical reasons for the failure of Populism in Missouri. Steiner contends that white farmers in northern Missouri were happy with the status quo and rejected calls for radical reform and major change in the agricultural economy. Women began to become active in public life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Janice Brandon-Falcone's "Constance Runcie and the Runcie Club of St. Joseph" examines the first two decades of an important women's club that still exists in St. Joseph, Missouri. Also included in The Other Missouri History are essays by Deborah J. Henry, Daniel A. Graff, Bonnie Stepenoff, Robert Faust, and Amber R. Clifford. Because of the diverse issues addressed, this volume will appeal to general readers of Missouri and Midwestern history, as well as to those who teach courses in history and have sought a supplemental text.