Author and daughter of Lena Horne turned 86

Gail Lumet Buckley

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Gail Lumet Buckley, the daughter of the late Lena Horne and a journalist and author who wrote two books about the history of her black middle-class family, died on July 18. She was 86.

Her daughter Jenny Lumet, a screenwriter and producer, told The New York Times She died of heart failure at her home in Santa Monica, California.

Buckley was born on December 21, 1937, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Brooklyn and Los Angeles. Rather than follow in her mother’s footsteps in Hollywood, she earned a bachelor’s degree from Radcliffe College in Massachusetts in 1959.

She worked for some time in Paris as an intern at Marie-Claire Magazine before returning to the United States, where he worked as a consultant to the National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students.

Buckley was then hired at Life Magazine in 1962. Later in her journalistic career, she also wrote guest articles for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily News of New York And Fashion.

It was 1986 when she wrote her first book, The Hornes: An American Familyafter finding hundreds of artifacts in an ancient chest belonging to her six-generation-old relatives.

“It all unfolded like a thriller – here’s what happened in 1875, here’s what happened in 1895,” she told the Los Angeles Times When The horns was published. “And then to read the history of African Americans, as I have done extensively, and to do that on top of that, it’s an exciting experience.”

Three decades later, she again began researching her family history. The Black Calhouns: From the Civil War to Civil Rights with an African-American FamilyThe book revolves around historical events and political movements that affected two sides of her family: one experienced Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow laws in Atlanta, the other experienced the Harlem Renaissance in New York City.

She also published American Patriots: The History of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm in 2001, for which she received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award the following year.

Her latest book, Radical Holiness: Race and Radical Women in the American Catholic Churchwas released in 2023. It focused on Katharine Drexel, Dorothy Day, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, and Sister Thea Bowman.

Buckley was married to director Sidney Lumet (who died in 2011) for 14 years after they met in 1963. They have two daughters together, Jenny and Amy Lumet.

Her other survivors include her two grandchildren. She was married to journalist Kevin Buckley for 38 years, but he died in 2021.