It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

Author Langston Hughes on Saturday night borrowed these lines from Charles Dickens to describe his boyhood in Lawrence during the early 1900s.

“It was an experience in life. It was an experience in reality,” said Charles Everett Pace, a Danville, Ky., Chautauqua actor who portrayed Hughes during a one-man performance at Ninth Street Baptist Church. “I’ve drawn on those experiences both the good and the bad in Lawrence to create something positive.”

More than 125 people listened intently as Pace told tales of Hughes’ national and international travels, read from his poetry and took questions from the audience.

A second-day issue and cancellation of the Langston Hughes postage stamp followed the performance. Both events were part of a community-wide celebration of the centennial of Hughes’ birth and were co-sponsored by the Lawrence Public Library, Kansas Humanities Council and US Bank.

Pace gave an abbreviated version of the performance on Friday afternoon to fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders from Langston Hughes, Pinckney and New York schools.

Saturday night, Pace re-created Hughes’ experience of touring the South as a young writer, visiting black universities and reading his poetry. Hughes was confronted by many instances of Jim Crowism, several of which Pace said were more amusing than infuriating.

Like the time a white policeman in Savannah, Ga., met Hughes at the door of a “white” waiting room the same door Hughes had just entered to buy a Sunday newspaper. The officer wouldn’t allow Hughes to leave through the door reserved for white folks, so he had to walk down the train tracks to get out.

The logic of the situation was so ridiculous that it “made me burst out laughing as I walked down the tracks,” Pace said.

Despite Hughes’ countless encounters with racism, and his knowledge that such attitudes were the rule rather than the exception for black people, he was able to retain a sense of optimism in his life and his writing, Pace said.

“He could see the flaws of America … but he also saw the promise,” he said. “An artist is a creative person. … When you start to create, it shows you possibility.”