The Veiled Prophet is gone. According to VP St. Louis, the central figure and namesake of the secret society that runs St. Louis' Fourth of July parade “is no longer part” of the group that once bore his name.
For generations, the group has operated as an exclusive fraternity with ties to the city’s wealthiest families and institutions. Founded as a whites-only club, the organization states on its website that it has “turned the page from the past and charted a new course of service, camaraderie and celebration in our community.”
In an interview with St. Louis on the Air’s Danny Wicentowski, VP St. Louis Chief Operating Officer Michael Ruwitch, who has been a member of the group for more than two decades, said the decision to remove the Veiled Prophet was made “for reasons” but declined to elaborate.
When asked what “VP” stands for, Ruwitch responded: “VP is just letters. It stands for nothing.”
He added, “It doesn't really represent anything.”
The group accepted its first Black members in 1979. It puts on the annual America’s Birthday Parade in St. Louis in honor of Independence Day. It also hosts a lavish debutante ball every December — where, for the first time in 2023, the Veiled Prophet did not make his traditional appearance at the ball’s main event.
The Veiled Prophet played a symbolic role in the ritual of the ball, greeting each debutante as they were presented to society. The real-life identities of each year’s prophet were kept secret. In 1972, protesters infiltrated the ball and managed to unmask the Veiled Prophet — revealing that year’s figure as Monsanto executive Tom K. Smith.
Gena Scott and Jaune Sauer, members of the civil rights group ACTION, masterminded the 1972 unmasking. The group’s founder, Percy Green, spent years publicly opposing the Veiled Prophet group, calling it a racist and elitist institution that should end and trying to infiltrate the Veiled Prophet ball to unmask its figurehead.
Green told St. Louis on the Air that the organization’s recent disavowal of the Veiled Prophet is a “baby step.”
“My recommendation is for it to be dissolved altogether, so St. Louis can become a city of fair play across the board,” he said.
VP St. Louis made a similar decision in 2019 to erase the figure from America’s Birthday Parade.
Founded as the Veiled Prophet parade, the event traditionally featured the Veiled Prophet on a special float surrounded by debutantes in designer dresses. The name of the event has changed multiple times, including VP Fair and Fair St. Louis. The organization changed the parade’s name again around 2018 to America’s Birthday Parade and renamed the sponsor organization Celebrate St. Louis.
VP St. Louis and Ruwitch run Celebrate St. Louis. Tax forms for 2022 show VP St. Louis spent around $850,000 to produce the parade and $880,000 on its debutante ball, the VP St. Louis Ball.
VP St. Louis also reported around $530,000 in expenses on “meetings and events” for members.
In the interview with St. Louis on the Air, Ruwitch and Wendell Covington Jr. — the founding executive director of the VP Community Impact Foundation — emphasized the group’s positive impact on St. Louis. Those efforts include multiple projects with local nonprofits such as Beyond Housing and the Urban League. Since its founding in 2003, “the Community Service Initiative completed more than 340 community service projects, staffed more than 9,000 volunteer positions and completed more than 30,000 hours of service,” according to the VP St. Louis website.
Covington said that the group is committed to expanding those efforts and creating new partnerships. Like Ruwitch, he declined to discuss the meaning of “VP” and said that no one has ever asked him about it.
Covington maintained that the success of the group lies in the future, not the past.
When asked to elaborate on what future success would look like, he replied in part, “I think success can also be defined by when we stop having interviews like this, and we start focusing on the progress that we've made, and the impact that we're making in St. Louis.”
There’s much more to the Veiled Prophet, its legacy and its connection to the protesters who joined the Ferguson Uprising 10 years ago. That story is explored in detail in Episode 7 of “We Live Here: 10 years after the Ferguson Uprising.”
