C. Everett Pace will portray Langston Hughes as part of the Baldwin City Chautauqua, which runs today through Sunday at Baker University. Pace stands outside St. Luke's A.M.E. church at Ninth and New York streets in Lawrence, which Hughes attended as a young boy.

Langston Hughes is back in Douglas County.

The American poet and writer who spent most of his childhood in Lawrence will be portrayed by Charles Everett Pace, of Texarkana, Texas, as part of the Famous Kansans Chautauqua that begins this evening in Baldwin City on the Baker University campus.

“It’s a way of speaking through history and speaking to history,” Pace said of his performances.

Other famous Kansans portrayed will be temperance movement leader Carry Nation by J. Karen Ray, a Washburn University English professor; legendary Kansas journalist William Allen White by Frederick Krebs, a humanities and social sciences professor at Johnson County Community College; and Kansas radio pioneer Dr. John R. Brinkley by William Worley, an adjunct history professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

The actors and moderator Richard Johnson just finished a Chautauqua last week in Medicine Lodge.

The Kansas Humanities Council works with communities to organize the Chautauqua, which is modeled after the traveling tent programs of the early 1900s.

The large white tent will be set up at the corner of Sixth and Grove streets on the Baker University campus. A “Meet the Chautauquans Ice Cream Social” begins at 6 p.m. today at the tent, sponsored by the Baldwin City Host Committee.

All events are free except for two lunches with performers on Friday and Saturday. The main attractions will be evening presentations by the actors.

The performers also have scheduled workshops on campus, and many other attractions in and around Baldwin City, such as the Black Jack Battlefield site and the Midland Railway, will be featured. During the performances, audience members have an opportunity to learn more about the historical figure and ask questions.

“History is linking the past, the present and the future,” said Pace, who played Frederick Douglass in the Bleeding Kansas Chautauqua in 2004 in Lawrence.

Another attraction of this week’s event is the StoryCorps Door-to-Door project in Baldwin City, where 16 area residents are scheduled to be interviewed. Kansas Public Radio is partnering with the humanities council and the Kansas Health Foundation on the project.

StoryCorps, the national oral history project, is featured regularly Friday mornings on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” KPR staff members plan to broadcast many of the interviews.

Organizers of the Chautauqua say it provides a unique atmosphere for entertainment and education.

“It’s rare to have that combination in everything we do these days,” said Tracy Quillin, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Humanities Council.