The Failed Joke of the Veiled Prophet
A new book, The Failed Joke of the Veiled Prophet: How a Captured Illinois Klansman Became the Grim Symbol of St. Louis’s Happiest Civic Celebration, by George Garrigues, will be released on February 1.
The book from City Desk Publishing reveals that a widely seen photograph of a hooded man holding a pistol and a shotgun is not a Ku Klux Klan night rider at all but is an "improvised" stand-in from Southern Illinois. The image has been erroneously presented as a symbol of the Veiled Prophet Parade of St. Louis, Missouri, most recently when it was paired online with that of sitcom star Ellie Kemper under the hashtag #KKKPrincess. She had served as the Veiled Prophet Queen of Love and Beauty in 1999 at the age of nineteen. |
“I don’t know any other spoof in American journalism that has gone so sour,” writes Garrigues, a retired journalist and journalism professor. “It’s time to set the record straight.”
As a woodcut, the image was first published in a news story in the newspaper Missouri Republican on August 23, 1875, and then reprinted in a humor column on October 6, 1878, Garrigues has discovered.
As a woodcut, the image was first published in a news story in the newspaper Missouri Republican on August 23, 1875, and then reprinted in a humor column on October 6, 1878, Garrigues has discovered.