Langston Hughes `born a year before accepted date`, researcher finds
(The Guardian Books News)

Poet researching archives of local African American newspaper finds story reporting on `little Langston´ before his recorded birth dateA poet´s late-night internet search of local newspaper archives has revealed that one of the US´s greatest cultural icons, the African American poet Langston Hughes, was born a year earlier than his biographers have believed for decades.Kansas poet Eric McHenry told the New York Times that he was trawling through digitised local newspaper archives when he spotted a note on the society page of the African American weekly newspaper, the Topeka Plaindealer from 20 December 1901, mentioning that `Little Langston Hughes has been quite ill for the past two weeks. He is improving.` The paper recorded the minutiae of daily life for locals, promising: `Do you want to know where your friends are, who they visit, what they are doing? What the race is doing in general? Read the Plaindealer.` Continue reading...