Keynote Speaker:
Retired Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter

Retired Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter was midway through his speech at a Memorial Day ceremony in an Ohio cemetery when he started discussing the role that freed Black enslaved people played in an early event honoring Civil War dead.

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Suddenly, his microphone cut off. Kemter, 77, tapped it a few times before yelling for assistance.

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Kemter began his speech by discussing how Memorial Day was born after hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died in the American Civil War were in need of a proper burial place. Then, shortly after beginning a discussion of the role that Black Charleston residents played in the holiday, his microphone stopped working.

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Kemter did not think much of it when the audio came back minutes later, just after he had finished discussing the holiday’s Black history. He assumed it was a technical glitch.

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But the disruption was no glitch. One of the event’s organizers later admitted the audio had been deliberately turned down.

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Kemter’s speech included details about a Memorial Day commemoration in Charleston, S.C., organized by a group of Black people freed from enslavement less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865.

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We've asked Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter to come to Buffalo to finish his speech.

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source-Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/03/ohio-barnard-kempter-mic-memorial-day/