Volume Intentionally Lowered During Veteran's Memorial Day Speech

HUDSON, OH — An Ohio American Legion chapter is facing some public backlash for turning the microphone off on a veteran while he was speaking about the role Black Americans played in the founding of Memorial Day during a ceremony on the holiday earlier this week.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter was giving the ceremony’s keynote speech, sharing a story about how freed Black slaves honored the soldiers who died during the Civil War when the microphone shut off, according to an Akron Beacon-Journal report.

A.J. Stokes, the event’s audio engineer, told the Beacon-Journal he refused to turn the microphone down for that part of Kemter’s speech, but that event organizer Cindy Suchan and Jim Garrison, adjunct of the Hudson American Legion Lee-Bishop Post 464, were “very adamant” about the volume being turned down for that part.

Stokes said Garrison turned the volume knob down, then back up, after Stokes refused to do it himself. Suchan told the newspaper that the organizers didn’t want that part of the speech broadcasted because it “was not relevant to our program for the day,” which, she said, was “honoring Hudson veterans,” according to the Beacon-Journal.

Ohio State Rep. Casey Weinstein, who represents the area of the Buckeye State that includes Hudson, called the apparent Memorial Day censoring of a veteran who served in the Army for four decades “an embarrassment.”

“I want to know why the organizers felt they had to censor this veteran at our Hudson Memorial Day event,” Weinstein tweeted.

The microphone was off for about two minutes of Kemter’s speech, video shared by the Beacon-Journal shows. Kempter, who was at the time under the impression that the microphone shutoff was a technical snafu, continued his speech without the audio boost.

He could be heard talking about how former slaves and freed Black men exhumed the remains of 200 Union soldiers who died in the war to give them a proper burial.

“I find it interesting that (the American Legion) would take it upon themselves to censor my speech and deny me my First Amendment right to (freedom of) speech,” Kemter told the Beacon-Journal. “This is not the same country I fought for.”

Kemter, a Hudson native, told the newspaper he got “numerous compliments” from ceremony attendees, many of whom told him they did not know that part of Memorial Day history.