Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 5.2% (52 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 0%
• Availability Heuristic - 3.4% (34 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 1.5% (15 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 0%
• Overconfidence Bias - 0%
• Framing Effect - 9.8% (98 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 0%
• Status Quo Bias - 1.5% (15 hits)
• Sunk Cost Effect - 1.5% (15 hits)
• Optimism Bias - 4.2% (42 hits)
• Pessimism Bias - 6.2% (62 hits)

Article text

Inside the Veiled Prophet’s ‘rancid’ past, a St.

Louis author searches for meaning

An annual parade in St.

Louis that was born in 1878 with the creation of the Veiled Prophet Society will return to the city’s downtown on Saturday for a July Fourth celebration.

The parade has undergone several name and schedule changes over the past century.

Now known as America’s Birthday Parade, the parade and its renamed sponsor organizations, VP St.

Louis and Celebrate St.

Louis, continue to exist in an uneasy balance with their former identities.

After the Veiled Prophet was removed from the parade in 2019, the parade pivoted to highlighting patriotism and pageantry.

St.

Louis author Devin O’Shea sees those changes as an attempt to erase what he describes as “rancid and unnerving” parts of the city’s past.

O’Shea attempts to unpack and draw lessons from that history in his debut book.

Published last month, "The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St.

Louis” spends its first chapters weaving a detailed account of the city’s 1877 railroad strike, which led to a temporary Communist takeover of the city’s government and several major businesses.

After the strike was crushed, the following year saw the introduction of the Veiled Prophet Society, an all-white fraternity that drew its imagery from an Orientalist poem and its membership from St.

Louis’ business and political elite.

Over the next century, O’Shea noted, “there was so much power concentrated in the Veiled Prophet Society.

You have the CEOs of every major company, from Monsanto to McDonnell Douglas to Anheuser-Busch.

They're all in it.

It is very grand.”

Many of those names and companies are still associated with the modern version of the group.

The members gather every December to throw a lavish debutante ball in which a procession of dozens of young women are presented to an anonymous, robed man whose face is hidden by a costume.

Until 2024, the figure’s name was the Veiled Prophet.

He is now known as the Grand Oracle.

O’Shea’s book traces the group’s names and symbols to their various sources, which prominently include a former Confederate cavalry officer named Alonzo Slayback.

O’Shea credits Slayback with choosing an existing illustration of a gun-wielding KKK figure for a newspaper advertisement of the first Veiled Prophet parade in 1878.

“He's able to smuggle the Klansmen iconography into mainstream St.

Louis culture by reusing this stamp that came from a southern Illinois news story about Klan violence,” O’Shea explained.

“Alonso Slayback had a lot of newspaper connections, he was friends with every editor, and so reusing the stamp is a direct expression of wanting to crush the multiracial general strike that had happened the year before.”

Over the next decades, the group’s all-white membership and associations to the KKK led to public opposition and protests.

In 1972, activists infiltrated and physically unveiled that year’s Veiled Prophet, revealing him to be an executive with Monsanto.

In 1979, the Veiled Prophet Society finally accepted its first Black members.

O’Shea argues that VP St.

Louis’ rebranding efforts are only making things worse for its image.

“It’s trying to back up one step at a time in a way that doesn't make a lot of sense,” he said, “because it's dragging out the inevitable.”

Yet the group persists, spending millions of dollars every year on the parade and ball.

The force keeping the group’s wealthy members involved, O’Shea suggests, “are powerful feelings of togetherness for elite men to bind each other together into a group.

… That's why I think they're clinging to it so hard.

There is real emotion involved.

But we all have to then take a step back and say the emotion involved is hanging onto a character that is giving St.

Louis a reputation every time he comes up.”

O’Shea has spent nearly a decade researching the Veiled Prophet group and tracing its various members and controversies.

With that project now spread over 400-plus pages, he said his goal for the book “is to use the Veiled Prophet as a teaching tool about class consciousness.”

“Ultimately, it's to close a chapter of the city's history so that something else can begin,” he continued.

“A more democratic city, a more open and egalitarian city.

The Veiled Prophet represents everything that is the antithesis of that.

The book is meant to be a way of coming to terms with the city's past.”

O’Shea spoke to “St.

Louis on the Air” producer Danny Wicentowski the day before his book’s June 23 publication.

Before the interview, STLPR reached out to VP St.

Louis to respond to O’Shea’s characterizations of the group and its members.

STLPR also asked the group about the removal of an anti-racism statement from the VP St.

Louis website.

On the site’s FAQ section, the statement previously said the group “turned the page from the past” and “fully disavows and unequivocally condemns racism in any form and disavows any racist past associated with the organization or its origins.”

The statement was removed at some point in the past two years.

VP St.

Louis did not respond to STLPR’s inquiries.

On Tuesday, STLPR reached out to VP St.

Louis for comment on the return of the America’s Birthday Parade.

The group’s chief operating officer, Michael Ruwitch — who previously told STLPR that the “VP” in the name VP St.

Louis “stands for nothing” and is “just letters” — confirmed the parade’s return to St.

Louis for the first time since 2024.

“The America’s Birthday Parade returns on July 4 as part of Celebrate Saint Louis and America’s 250,” Ruwitch wrote in an email.

“We’re excited to welcome it back and remain focused on bringing people together for a safe, family-friendly celebration that showcases the best of St.

Louis.”

To hear the full conversation about the past and present of the Veiled Prophet in St.

Louis with author Devin O’Shea, listen to “St.

Louis on the Air” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube, or click the play button below.