The Rev. Darrick McGhee was seething. He and four other clergy were gathered at one of their regular public meetings to talk about tough issues, and that day they were trying to make sense of the latest shooting of a young black man.

As the hour dragged on, McGhee silently rocked back and forth on his stool. His fellow panel members talked about gun control, the right to bear arms -- anything but race, the real issue at hand, he thought.

When he could no longer remain silent, McGhee, the only black member of the panel, finally spoke up.

"Hold on, we can't let this forum end and never hit the core issue of what's going on," he told the crowd gathered at Temple Israel in Tallahassee for the monthly lunch meeting called Faith, Food, Friday. "It's what I deal with every single day."

With tears running down his face, the father of two recalled how months earlier his son had told him that one of his white classmates had called him the N-word. "I honestly thought I could protect my son and my daughter from that happening to them," McGhee said.

The audience stood and applauded.