A crowd of about 500 people gathered Tuesday night at the gym of Maitland's Jewish Community Center for a panel discussion on the line between free speech and hate speech.

The event was organized by the Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida, which is also based in Maitland. One of the event's panelists was Angela King, a former violent extremist who said she was disarmed by kindness and compassion.

"As a child I learned racial slurs, I learned homophobia, which taught me to hate myself," said King, once a skinhead, now Deputy Director and Co-Founder of Life After Hate. " I learned stereotypes that taught me to fear people, especially people who didn't look like me."

A prison sentence for a hate crime in the late 1990's put King on the path towards redemption.

"Every minute we're not having this conversation, we're paying in human life," King continued.

It was a packed house for the event, attendance increased in response to the deadly protests in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. Attendees wanted to talk about where to draw the line between Free Speech and Hate Speech.

"What do they want from us and essentially -- I'm just going to say this, it sounds a little scary -- when I was involved more than two decades ago, what's happening right now today, the violence we're seeing, is what I was actively working to make happen then," King explained.

Other panelists included a law professor, Orlando Police Chief John Mina, educators and State Senator Geraldine Thompson.

"I do believe that one area that we may have fallen down in that we need to address is to actually confront their ideas," shared Mitch Bloomer, who serves as the Resource Teacher at the Holocaust Center.

King, who identifies herself as member of the LGBT community, never truly knew what it was like to be hated and marginalized until June 12, 2016.

"I never had even close of a grasp on that until the Pulse shooting," King said.

Panelists concluded the event by explaining that if you're uncomfortable when you see or hear something hateful, and if it's safe to do so, you should speak up and say hate is not ok.