Gail Lumet Buckley was an author and journalist whose work chronicled her family’s experiences from slavery to middle class America.
- Died: July 18, 2024 (Who else died on July 18?)
- Details of death: Died at her home in Santa Monica, California of heart failure at the age of 86.
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Gail Lumet Buckley’s legacy
Gail Lumet Buckley had a story to tell even before she became a journalist and author. As the daughter of Lena Horne (1917–2010), a singer, actress and activist often called Hollywood’s first Black star, she was a firsthand witness to the code switching her mother had to utilize in order to navigate the differing worlds she dwelled in.
She earned her degree from Radcliffe College in Massachusetts and went into journalism, writing for The New York Times, Life magazine, and many others. In 1986, she chronicled her family’s story over the course of several generations in her first book, “The Hornes: An American Family.” Spanning six generations, including her family’s time as slaves, the book shone a spotlight on the Black middle class experience in the United States.
Buckley followed it up with “American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm” in 2001, and “Radical Sanctity: Race and Radical Women in the American Catholic Church” in 2023. She was married to director Sidney Lumet (1924–2011) for 14 years in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Notable quote
“My mother created a sort of dual personality for herself, her Southern personality, when she’d go to one-room schoolhouses, and the kids made fun of her accent and her skin color. And then the other personality that she’d have to which was her real personality when she’d go back to her grandmother into Brooklyn and her friends in Brooklyn.”—Interview with NPR, 2010
Tributes to Gail Lumet Buckley
Full obituary: The Hollywood Reporter
