Gail Lumet Buckley, Lena Horne’s daughter and a journalist and author who wrote two books about her Black middle-class family’s history, passed away on July 18 at the age of 86.
Her daughter Jenny Lumet, a screenwriter and producer, informed The New York Times that she died at her Santa Monica residence due to heart failure.
Born on December 21, 1937, in Pittsburgh, Buckley was raised in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.
Despite her mother’s Hollywood legacy, she pursued a bachelor’s degree at Radcliffe College in Massachusetts in 1959.
Gail Lumet Buckley’s career journey included interning at Marie Claire magazine in Paris, counselling with the National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students, and eventually joining Life magazine in 1962.
Throughout her journalism career, she contributed articles to various publications such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily News of New York, and Vogue.
In 1986, Buckley delved into her family’s history, leading to her first book, The Hornes: An American Family, inspired by discovering ancestral artefacts.
Decades later, she explored her family’s past once more with The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights With One African American Family, focusing on significant historical events affecting her family branches.
Her book American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military From the Revolution to Desert Storm earned her the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 2002.
Her latest work, Radical Sanctity: Race and Radical Women in the American Catholic Church, published in 2023, spotlighted figures like Katharine Drexel, Dorothy Day, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, and Sister Thea Bowman.
Buckley, who was previously wed to director Sidney Lumet until his passing in 2011, shared a 14-year marriage with him after they crossed paths in 1963.
Together, they had two daughters, Jenny and Amy Lumet. In addition to her daughters, she is survived by her two grandchildren.
She later got married to journalist Kevin Buckley for 38 years until his passing in 2021.
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