TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A professor in Kansas says that poet Langston Hughes may have been born a year earlier that what's on record.

Hughes is commonly thought to have been born in 1902, spending his childhood in Topeka and Lawrence, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported .

But Washburn University professor Eric McHenry said he unearthed evidence that Hughes was actually born a year earlier. He said a black newspaper called The Plaindealer had an entry from 1901 that indicated "Little Langston Hughes" was under the weather but improving.

The "ephemeral gossip" made a "vibrant historic record," said...