The Internet Has Discovered That Ellie Kemper Was Crowned The 1999 Queen Of A Ball Linked To White Supremacy
You may know Ellie Kemper as Erin from The Office, or as the titular unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, or even one of Jon Hamm’s former high school drama class students. But the internet just discovered that she was the Queen of Love and Beauty of the 1999 Veiled Prophet Ball. And it’s probably one that she really didn’t want anyone to be adding, due to the fact that the Veiled Prophet Ball is a little KKK-adjacent. To think, just 48 hours ago, the weirdest little-known fact about Ellie Kemper was that her family is insanely wealthy.
According to several newspaper articles and pictures dating back to pre-Y2K, Ellie Kemper participated in something called the Veiled Prophet Ball. I didn’t know what the Hell that was, but if you’re from Missouri and your pappy is the top hat-wearing, cane-spinning type, then you might be familiar. According to Popculture.com, the VPB was first started back in 1878 by rich society types of St. Louis, Missouri. It’s held every December, and the purpose of the ball is for members of the Veiled Prophet Organization to get together and debut about 50 young female debutants. Debutant Balls are nothing that weird, but the Veiled Prophet Ball is a little unlike your average deb party. All the debs are introduced by a friend of their fathers to the “Veiled Prophet of Khorassan,” who is just some random rich man they selected for that year’s festivities. Five young women are chosen as Special Maids, with one being crowned the Queen of Love and Beauty. Here’s where that KKK connection comes in. This is what the Veiled Prophet looks like, and some have described the Veiled Prophet Organization as being like the KKK for the wealthy elite:
Full article https://t.co/w6zSPukUac
— Def Noodles (@defnoodles) June 1, 2021
Those pictures are a NO THANK YOU, regardless of the intention of that super-secret rich southern person society. This is why everyone cringed when they subsequently saw these pictures of Ellie Kemper as the Queen of Hoods and Robes Love and Beauty.
So was no one gonna tell me Ellie kemper aka kimmy Schmidt was crowned KKK queen in 1999 pic.twitter.com/QdHJ6wGZGv
— charlie (@dianahungerr) May 31, 2021
😔 I want her to come out and publicly unclaim it!! pic.twitter.com/HsBisGuvSH
— Thee Hannah (@hannastasia) May 31, 2021
There are people who are arguing that the Veiled Prophet Ball is just a regular ol’ party where young girls can get dressed up in their prettiest white dress. But there are also people who have accused the Veiled Prophet Organization of antisemitism, and also that Black people have been saying for decades that the VPB has racist energy, especially since it was once a whites-only event.
They dressed up as a black veiled prophet and crowed their own VP queen who instead of being called the queen of love and beauty like the VP ball did they crowned a queen of human justice pic.twitter.com/p9XyVq5EQ3
— Sarah Moldafsky (@MoldyMuseumEd) June 1, 2021
Ellie’s great-great-grandfather was William Thornton Kemper Sr., an American banker who established two major banks in the Midwest (Commerce Bank and United Missouri Bank). Her grandma was Mildred Lane Kemper, and there’s a huge art museum named after her in Missouri. She comes from one of the wealthiest families in the Midwest. So Ellie Kemper is “last name on buildings” rich.
Everyone has embarrassing pictures from their teen years (my prom pictures are a permanent reminder that I really did believe I could pull off MAC Saint Germain lipstick). But not everyone has the type of pictures that make their publicist nervously ask you if you want to make a public apology for them. Ellie hasn’t done that yet, but it’s probably only a matter of time, considering people have begun flooding her Instagram comments and quoting Tituss Burgess’ Titus Andromedon by asking her “What white nonsense is this?” But now that we know what we know, it feels like perfect casting that Ellie starred in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It was a show about a girl from the midwest who was kidnapped by a creepy older man who called himself The Reverend and forced to live in a secret bunker for 15 with other young girls, being convinced that no one outside their world existed. They probably asked her in her audition if she had any questions about her character, and she was like, “Oh, definitely not. A young girl living in a secret society invented by the patriarchy, that also happens to have zero Black people? This will basically be method acting for me.”
Pic: Wenn.com/FayesVision