A retired army lieutenant thought what any invited guest speaker might think when their microphone stops working, that a technological glitch was to blame. But when it happened to retired Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter during a Memorial Day ceremony at an Ohio cemetery, he later learned it was no glitch, he told The Washington Post. A representative of the Ohio American Legion intentionally cut Kemter’s microphone when he started to talk about the role former slaves played in establishing the tradition of honoring fallen soldiers.
The Ohio American Legion has since issued a public apology and demanded that one of the responsible parties, Jim Garrison, resign as a member of the organization. “The American Legion Department of Ohio does not hold space for members, veterans, or families of veterans who believe that censoring black history is acceptable behavior,” the Ohio American Legion said in a news release on Friday. The organization added: “We discovered that the censoring that occurred at the Memorial Day Ceremony in Hudson, Ohio, sponsored by Hudson American Legion Post 464, was pre-meditated and planned by Jim Garrison and Cindy Suchan. They knew exactly when to turn the volume down and when to turn it back up.”