Talk to almost any Italian-American living in Niles and they have a story about one of their relatives who participated in the effort to stop the Ku Klux Klan from entering the city and holding a parade on Nov. 1, 1924. Even the curator of the National McKinley Birthplace Museum, Patricia Scarmuzzi, has a story.

“My aunt talked about it. She was little at the time and would have been 97 or 98 if she was alive today.When that (the confrontation between the KKK and anti-KKK citizens of Niles) happened, they were living on Depot Street. They knew that the KKK was coming after the immigrants, the Italians. They told their children, ‘You come straight home from school today and you do not stop anywhere.'”