An Ohio lawmaker is calling for the ceremony organizer of a Memorial Day event in Hudson, Ohio to be fired after they cut the audio of a veteran in the middle of his speech as he began speaking about the role black people played in creating the holiday.
About two minutes into the speech by veteran and keynote speaker Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter, his audio was cut as he started discussing how a group of freed black people were the first to commemorate the holiday when shortly after the Civil War they exhumed the remains of more than 200 Union soldiers who died in battle in Charleston and gave them “a proper burial.”
The event organizer Cindy Suchan who chairs the Memorial Day parade committee and is president of the Hudson American Legion Auxiliary confirmed to the Akron Beacon Journal that the audio was cut because that portion of Kemter’s speech “was not relevant to our program for the day” and that the “theme of the day was honoring Hudson veterans.”
On Thursday, Democratic state Rep. Casey Weinstein called for Suchan to be fired to send a message that “racist censorship has NO place in Hudson!”
“As a Hudson resident, a veteran of the United States Air Force, and the past Ranking Member of the Ohio House Armed Services and Veterans Affairs Committee, I find the censorship of Lt. Col. Kemter profoundly alarming,” Weinstein said in a letter.
