A Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) panel in National Harbor, Md., turned controversial Friday when one participant defended slavery as a good thing for African-Americans.

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“It seems to me like you’re reaching out to voters at the expense of young white southern males like myself,” audience member Scott Terry (pictured) says to presenter K. Carl Smith, a member of the Fredrick Douglass Republicans. “I feel like my demographic remains systematically disenfranchised.”

Video of the incident was posted online.

Watch Scott Terry make his comments:

Shortly after, he asks if Smith would support racial segregation as Booker. T Washington outlined it at the time. In response, Smith cites a letter Fredrick Douglass wrote to his former slave master, which he says forgive him. for all of his mistreatment.

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“For giving him shelter and food?” Terry mutters under his breath. Many people in the audience expressed shock at Terry’s appalling words.

ThinkProgress.com spoke with Terry after the panel, who came with a friend wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt and continued promoting his rhetoric. Asked if he would be OK with a society where Blacks are submissive to whites, he reportedly said, “I’d be fine with that.”

And according to the interview, Terry allegedly said that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa.”

When a woman began challenging his knowledge of the Republican Party, Terry responded with a straight out of the 1950s answer: “I didn’t know the legacy of the Republican Party included women correcting men in public.”

In a statement released after Terry’s shocking remarks made headlines, Smith mainly responds to a female reporter who challenged Terry.

“I was invited by the Tea Party Patriots to conduct a breakout session entitled: “Trump The Race Card” and share the Frederick Douglass Republican Message. In the middle of my delivery, while discussing the 1848 ‘Women’s Rights Convention,’ I was rudely interrupted by a woman working for the Voice of Russia. She abruptly asked me: ‘How many black women were there?’ This question was intentionally disruptive and coercive with no way of creating a positive dialogue.” “In addition, a young man who wasn’t a Tea Party Patriot (Terry), made some racially insensitive comments, he said: ‘Blacks should be happy that the slave master gave them shelter, clothing, and food.’ At the conclusion of the breakout session, I further explained to him the Frederick Douglass Republican Message which he embraced, bought a book, and we left as friends.”

Left as friends?

Really? If Smith is suppose to help lead the charge for recruiting more African-Americans and minorities to the Party, it seems like the GOP is off to an awful start.

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