The audio was cut on a veteran’s microphone at a Memorial Day event in Hudson, Ohio, shortly after he began discussing the role Black people played in the holiday’s origins in an incident that local media report was no accident. According to the Akron Beacon Journal, the incident occurred during an event marking the holiday at a local cemetery on Monday, just minutes after retired Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter started to deliver remarks. During his speech, Kemter, whom the Journal reported was the keynote speaker for the event, discussed the history of the holiday, including the discovery of newspaper clippings and handwritten notes that showed a group of freed Black people were among the first to commemorate the holiday following the surrender of the Confederacy.