Actress Ellie Kemper, most notable for her role as Erin Hannon on The Office and as Kimmy Schmidt in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is facing fierce backlash after a photo of her partaking in a controversial pageant resurfaced.

The archived St.Louis-Dispatch photo shows a 19-year-old Kemper smiling as she’s crowned the 1999 “Veiled Prophet Queen of Love and Beauty.” 

The ball, known as The Veil Prophet Ball, was organized by the Veiled Prophet Organization, a group created in 1878 by mostly wealthy, white elites and spearheaded by former Confederate cavalrymen Charles and Alonzo Slayback, according to a 2014 Atlantic article.

Though not blatantly stated, the ritualistic pageant resembles an alignment with the Ku Klux Klan, specifically because of the white veil and white robe that is worn by a secret member called the Veiled Prophet. In the ceremony, a daughter of one of the group's members is crowned queen by the inconspicuous affiliate.   

The Atlantic article also noted that the founders sought to perpetuate the divide between Black and white workers during the city’s labor strikes in the late 1800s.

"Feeling the heat from industrial competitors to the North and labor unrest inside the city, the business elite of St. Louis decided in 1878 to double down on the static racial and economic power structure of the city," Scott Beauchamp, author of the Atlantic article, The Mystery of St. Louis’s Veiled Prophet, wrote. "The Veiled Prophet Ball and Fair was a powerful symbol of that reassertion of control."

Black and Jewish people were prohibited from participating in the ball until 1979, following protests from civil rights group Action Committee to Improve Opportunities for Negroes (ACTION).

After discovering that Kemper, who comes from a wealthy and influential Missouri family, was involved with the pageant, some Twitter users had a few words to describe their feelings on the controversy. 

In the 2000 book, The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration: Power on Parade, 1877-1995, historian Thomas Spencer mentioned that the Veiled Prophet Ball, which eventually grew into a celebratory, traditional parade called the VP Fair, became a way to exert dominance over the masses.

"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," Spencer wrote. "The parade, therefore, was intended to awe the masses toward passivity with its symbolic show of power." 

“I don't know much about Ellie Kemper, but growing up in St. Louis in the 1970s and 1980, I remember The Veiled Prophet Fair very well,” CNN commentator and former White House aide, Keith Boykin wrote on Twitter. “I was always told it was only for white people. The racial segregation was so normalized that people were just expected to know their place.”

Some also joked about the character Titus Burgess in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt as being the only good aspect of the sitcom.

“Black People in St.Louis grow up screaming to the top of our lungs about the Veil Prophet Society. Ever so often some one from out of town writes about it. Ellie Kemper aint nothing new. Every white elite family in the state of Missouri participates in this organization,” one user wrote.

Kemper has not yet addressed the controversy.

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