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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.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 127).
A biography of Folk (1869-1923), who gained national acclaim for investigating corruption in local government while a district attorney. Along with muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens, he revealed the extent of wrongdoing and helped establish the idea that public office was a trust rather than an opportunity for personal gain. He was elected governor of Missouri in 1904 and left a legacy of reform. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
"Standing on a Volcano: The Life and Times of David Rowland Francis is a biography of a fascinating man, and a long-needed major reassessment of a controversial and important figure in U.S.-Soviet Relations."--BOOK JACKET.
Complementing the new permanent exhibition at the Missouri Historical Society, this anthology gathers over three centuries of writings on St. Louis by 100 individuals who have been inspired to describe the physical and cultural essence of this region. The volume contains excerpted selections from all genres--travel diaries, poetry, fiction, journalism, drama, and rare out-of-print and previously unpublished archival material--including poems by Angus Umphraville, from the first volume of verse published west of the Mississippi, and newspaper articles by Theodore Dreiser when he was a beat reporter for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Other compelling excerpts were authored by such notables as Auguste Chouteau, Charles Dickens, William Wells Brown, William T. Sherman, Sara Teasdale, T. S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, Fanny Hurst, William S. Burroughs, Miles Davis, Nzotake Shange, John Lutz, Carl Phillips, and Quincy Troupe. A biographical introduction precedes each entry to place the author and the excerpt in the proper historical context. The content of Seeking St. Louis was enriched by the involvement of several of the St. Louis area's foremost literary experts--Robert Boyd, Jan Garden Castro, Gerald Early, Wayne Fields, and Karen Goering--who served as contributing editors.
In this beautifully crafted book, Elizabeth Kendall tells the story of a family, of a passionate attachment between a mother and a daughter and the sudden tragedy that tears it apart. American Daughter is also a brilliant portrait of wellborn women's lives in cities and towns in the post-World War II era, as Kendall evokes how difficult it was to become anything other than an American daughter, which meant being a dependent woman. Occupying a coveted place in St. Louis's privileged high society, Henry and Betty Kendall seemed to be the American dream come true: six children, a sprawling house, a legacy of higher education at Harvard and Vassar. Yet underneath lay the flawed marriage of an idealistic young woman who made her eldest daughter her best friend and turned civil rights into her salvation. Elizabeth maintained the family silence as eccentricities began to appear in her father's behavior, along with whispers of financial difficulties. She accompanied her mother back to Vassar for a summer program on the home and family, then came into her own, away from her family, at the haven of a girls' summer camp and at Radcliffe. From the war-torn 1940s, when young men in uniform, home on leave, went to debutante parties, through the seismic social changes of the 1960s, Kendall tells the intertwined story of her mother and herself, of their powerful bond and how both shaped their lives in response to it. Unrelentingly honest, rich with humor and insights into families and women's lives, American Daughter is both a poignant portrait of American life at the middle of the twentieth century, and a dual coming-of-age story of a mother and a daughter, united by commitment and love, separated by a fatal accident-and by the vastly different birthrights of their generations.
By examining these and many other accomplishments of these families, Julius Hunter provides a unique historical perspective on the past century of American life. In addition to providing the historical background, Hunter presents vivid descriptions of glamorous social occasions in Westmoreland and Portland - weddings, balls, even funerals - and he shows that the residents were sometimes united, and sometimes split, by bonds of family, marriage, religion, club membership, and political preference. Interviews with people who lived on those streets early in this century provide a unique glimpse of what it was like to grow up in the prestigious neighborhood. Hunter's text is superbly illustrated. More than 200 color photographs depict the houses as they appear today, including architectural details and interior views. More than 200 black-and-white photographs provide a glimpse of St. Louis's past. Every house that has stood in either Westmoreland or Portland is shown.
After revising the original 1981 edition in 1990 and looking back to regret his enthusiastic reporting of what turned out to be temporary and peripheral trends, Primm has decided that current events are not safe water for historians. He has not, therefore extended the text to include the 1990s, but better technology has considerably improved the quality of the illustrations. Distributed in the US by U. of Missouri Press. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR