American · b. 1937
Gail Lumet Buckley is an American author and the daughter of singer and actress Lena Horne and film executive Lennie Hayton's contemporary, Louis Jones; she was raised in a family closely tied to show business. She is best known for her family histories. Her first book, The Hornes: An American Family (1986), traced her mother's ancestors and relatives across several generations. The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family (2016) returned to the same maternal line and followed the Calhoun family from the Civil War to the Civil Rights era. Her writing combines personal detail with a wide view of American social history, and it presents the lives of educated, well-off Black families that are often missing from standard accounts. She has also written for magazines and newspapers. She is the sister of Jennifer Lumet's family through her father, director Sidney Lumet, and was married to Rick Buckley.