When Clay Jenkinson began working as an English professor, he didn’t expect to spend a significant portion of his career in tights re-enacting dead historical figures.

On Thursday night, however, Jenkinson stood in front of a packed house as he depicted Thomas Jefferson for the headline lecture in Flathead Valley Community College’s 2016 Honors Symposium.

The night was the second lecture in a series of six wrapped around the theme “Dividing Lines: Why Good People are Divided by Politics, Religion, Race and Gender.”

A graying redhead, the third president of the United States looked toward the audience that spilled into the next room.

“You think your elections are divided? The craziest thing you’ve seen yet? When I ran as president in 1800 the identity of this nation was contested,” Jenkinson said in the voice of Jefferson. “The press said I was the antichrist — an infidel — an atheist. They said I’d ruin society.”

For 30 years, Jenkinson has used the voice of history’s characters such as Meriwether Lewis, John Steinbeck and Theodore Roosevelt to offer a sense of understanding for events unfolding today.

“People hunger to provide perspective to the world they live — a world of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, 9/11, the collapse of the economy,” Jenkinson said. “I use a historian’s perspective to show we’re not living in the end times, these are just strange times.”

Jenkinson has paired history, humanities and performance into the title of cultural commentator. He has performed in classrooms across the United States, for 25 state legislatures, national judicial conferences, Stephen Colbert, President George H.W. Bush and the Clintons.

Off stage, Jenkinson is the director of The Dakota Institute and the chief consultant for the Theodore Roosevelt Center through Dickinson State University, where he co-hosts National Public Radio’s “Thomas Jefferson Hour.”

When Jenkinson walks through a hotel lobby in 19th century clothes, he sometimes wonders how his Bismarck, N.D., home developed a walk-in closet of wigs, swords and hats.

He also questioned his job after he triggered a riot in a maximum security Southern California prison when one of the inmates remembered Jefferson had slaves.

“I mean, this could not have been a rational career path — pretend to be a dead man — it’s really an insane and silly idea,” he said. “But I use it as a vehicle to put people in seats. And the gimmick works — usually.”

The first time Jenkinson donned a wig and introduced himself as Thomas Jefferson in 1987, he did it as a favor to a friend. He hated being in front of crowds and the only play he had participated in was his third grade’s production of “Cinderella.”

But the role intoxicated him. He gave voice to the man who spoke self-evident truths into the Declaration of Independence. And people listened.

“It grew from there. You start by just wanting to understand something — like who was the father of the atomic bomb — what it took to build the atomic bomb — why did we use it on Japan?” he said. “That’s when history ends and humanities begins.”

He treats history as an unresolved narrative.

When his FVCC audience asked how Jefferson would have viewed the rapid growth of Islam, the nation opening its borders to immigrants and if history treated Jefferson fairly, Jenkinson answered based on what he knew about the man he impersonates.

Jenkinson said each generation reinterprets history. While it offers lesson with each new text or fact that’s discovered, it’s never enough to give society all the answers.

However, Jenkinson said he hopes it’s enough for Americans to return to a Jeffersonian nation.

“A nation that relies on education and is capable of disagreement as rational friends — that’s committed to science and reason, and has a belief that every human being should be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and self-actualized,” he said.

“But we’re the nation of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. We have to return to discourse.”

Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.