Retired Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter said he included the story in his speech because he wanted to share the history of how Memorial Day originated.
In this frame grab from video provided by Hudson Community Television, retired Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter taps the microphone after organizers turned off the audio during his speech at a Memorial Day ceremony, Monday, May 31, 2021, in Hudson, Ohio. Organizers of the ceremony turned off Kemter's microphone when he began talking about how freed Black slaves had honored fallen soldiers soon after the Civil War.
Cindy Suchan, chair of the Memorial Day parade committee and president of the Hudson American Legion Auxiliary, said it was either she or Jim Garrison, adjutant of the American Legion Post 464, who turned down the audio, the“The American Legion deplores racism and reveres the Constitution,” the organization’s national commander, James W. “Bill” Oxford, said in a statement.
Kemter said he was disappointed that the organizers silenced two minutes of his 11-minute speech, during which he talked about how former slaves and freed Black men exhumed the remains of more than 200 Union soldiers from a mass grave in Charleston, South Carolina, and gave them a proper burial.
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