Devin Thomas O’Shea – The Veiled Prophet
Ed is joined by Devin Thomas O’Shea who has researched into the customs and traditions which have continued – together with some of their more unsavoury beliefs, post the American Civil War.
From Wikipedia
The parade and ball were organized and funded by the Veiled Prophet Organization, an all-male, secret society founded in 1878 by prominent St. Louisans.
The organization chooses one member to be a Veiled Prophet who conducts meetings and oversees activities but not necessarily for one year, spokesman Allyn Glaub said in 1991. They were a highly select group culled from the area's business, civic and governmental leaders, "the people who run St. Louis and St. Louis County." At that time the organization was racially mixed.
Historian Thomas Spencer believes that the event generally revealed rather than soothed class conflicts.Spencer wrote that the VP parade was created in part to displace the parades regularly held by the trade unions. Spencer believed it cast workingmen in a passive rather than active role, not merely in the celebration, but in the mythology asserted for the history and economic life of the city.[citation needed] Occasionally the unions would stage events intended to mock the pretensions of the VP Ball. The leading socialist and working-class newspaper, St. Louis Labor, "wrote negatively" about the VP event and its organizers between the early 1900s and 1930.
The ball, which most recently took place on the Friday before Christmas each year, was attended by thousands, but was protested by Black Lives Matter supporters, as well as the St. Louis-based group Missourians Organized for Reform and Empowerment, which linked St. Louis's wealthiest one percent to the VP organization.
Devin's research is both deep and intricate, involving descriptions of the labor movements in the US, the Klan and other events many of which have remained, until now, shrouded in history.
Twitter Devin O'Shea
Website Devin O'Shea
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