One For The Road: Happy Birthday, Charles Weeghman, The Klansman Who Owned The Cubs

By Samantha Abernethy in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 12, 2012 10:40PM

Informal three-quarter length portrait of Charles Weeghman standing in front of a building in Chicago in 1926. Weeghman is smoking a cigarette and his hand is covering his mouth. Chicago History Museum.

Informal full-length portrait of Charles Weeghman, owner of the Federal League Chicago Whales, and an unidentified man standing at home plate during a German Day celebration on the field at Weeghman Field (later renamed Wrigley Field), located at 1060 West Addison Street and bounded by West Waveland Avenue, North Seminary Avenue, North Clark Street, and North Sheffield Avenue in the Lake View community area of Chicago, Illinois. Baseball players and men wearing suits are standing in the background. Chicago History Museum. 1914.

Three-quarter length portrait of Charles Weeghman of the Federal League, wearing a suit and looking at the camera, sitting in front of a dark backdrop in a room in Chicago in 1913. Chicago History Museum.

Informal full-length group portrait of William M. Walker, James A. Gilmore (holding a baseball in one hand), and Charles Weeghman standing in front of a long fence on a field bordered by a track in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1914. A building is visible across the track in the background. Text on image reads: Photo by G. Dickeson, Shreveport, La. Gilmore was president of baseball\'s Federal League. Chicago History Museum.

In 1916 Charles Weeghman purchased the Chicago Cubs for $500,000 and moved them to what would become Wrigley Field. He sold the team to Wrigley Co. in 1920. That's fairly well-known information about the prominent businessman. But what you may not know is that Weeghman had connections to the Ku Klux Klan.

Weeghman no longer owned the Cubs when he offered up his farm to host one of the largest Ku Klux Klan rallies in history in August 1921, but he was still a well-known public figure. When he died in 1938, his front-page obituary in the Tribune ignored it, and still the extent of his involvement is unclear. In this Chicago Reader article "Boys In The Hoods" from 1996, the writer details how the press at the time overlooked the detail in coverage of the event.

"While millions of red-blooded yankees sit quietly and watch the growth and revival of the infamous Ku Klux Klan in the southland," the Defender reporters warned on their newspaper's front page five days later, "this order has come into the north and gathered the southerners in this part of the country into their clan." The paper's description of the ceremony was positioned under a triple-decker headline: "Ku Klux Invade Chicago; City Slept as Torches Light Skies; Southern Order With 'Tainted Reputation' Gaining Place in North."

Most of Chicago's daily newspapers also placed the story on page one. Under a banner headline "Ku Klux Rites Draw 12,000; Lake Zurich Scene of Weird Klan Ritual," the Tribune offered the most detailed account, even though its reporter had missed the proceedings and had relied on information provided by Simmons. The Tribune also ran a full-page advertisement from the Klan on the day of the rally claiming, among other things, that the invisible empire "does not encourage or foster lawlessness, racial prejudice, or religious intolerance."

One key fact that escaped the notice of the city newspapers was the location of the event. Most accounts referred only to a field six miles south of the body of water known as Lake Zurich. The Klan did all it could to hide the name of the property owner. Only the Barrington Review revealed that millionaire restaurateur Charles Weeghman had sponsored the Klan rally on his farm just a couple of miles southeast of the lake.

Well, you know how we feel about Illinois bigots, don't you?