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BOWIE, Md. Rand Paul did not make a good first impression on Robert Stubblefield. In 2013, the then-20-year-old student at historically black Bowie State College watched a livestream as the Kentucky senator spoke athistorically black Howard University. It didn't go well for Paul, who was interrupted by a protest, and laughed at by students whom he presumed to teach black history.

"He sounded like he was talking down to blacks about the Republican Party," recalled Stubblefield, now a graduate student in public administration. "How come you guys abandoned us? We're the onesthat freed the slaves! There was a time when y'all voted Republican! He didn't understand, it wasn't like we just voted for Democrats. We voted on issues."

Two years later, Stubblefield had a fourth-row seat for Paul's visit to Bowie State. He'd initially sat in a back row, behind half a dozen cameras set up to tape Paul. But several students in those seats were encouraged to move to the front. Even when they did, the student center ballroom that hosted Paul's speech was a little more than half full, with white libertarian visitors (at least 45 had signed up on a Facebook event page) complicating the image somewhat.

The content more than made up for that. Paul has sharpened his pitch to black audiences over many visits and roundtables, some well-covered and some more private; he's also re-introduced sentencing reform bills that give him more to talk about.

"Those of us who have jobs and have lived fairly privileged lives don't know what it's like to pay fines and penalties on top of other fines, and how someone's life can spiral out of control,"said Paul, leaning on a podium and wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. "As I've learned more about criminal justice system, I've come to believe it's something that's going to keep the two Americas separate."

Paul ran through data and examples, from Ferguson to the novels of Tom Wolfe, to demonstrate the tragedy of over-criminalization. Some of his examples had clunked when he debuted them on TV or radio appearances. "What reason do we have for telling the police that they have to take someone down for selling cigarettes that aren't taxed?" asked Paul. "Couldn't we give them a ticket?"

He was referring (though not by name) to the Eric Garner killing in New York, and while thatanalysis had been a brief outrage last year, it made no ripplein the Bowie State auditorium. That was likely because he put everything in the context of laws discriminating against non-whites and the poor. The effect of current de jure criminal codes, said Paul, was "somewhat like segregation."

Paul never lost his audience, largely because the format was so tightly controlled. Instead of calling on audience members, Paul spoke to a moderator who based some questions on suggestions provided by the crowd. The only question from the audience focused on a remark he made about how he wanted tax-free zones in blighted cities like Detroit, and that it wasn't acceptable to just hand over "a billion dollars" and accept cities to fix themselves.

"We give Israel $3 billion annually," said Pierre Dorival, a sophomore at the college. "Where does that money come from, if we don't have it for Detroit?"

"It's true of everything on the margin that we don't have money for some things," answered Paul. "The other day we had people come in wanting money for diabetes. There's a lot of good causes out there, and they want money for it, but I tellthem what I tell everybody else: If there's a cause you believe in, you have to figure out where the money comes from."

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Rand Paul attacks modern 'segregation' in speech at black college