Black Calhouns (Buckley) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—December 21, 1937
• Where—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Radcliff College (now Columbia University)
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York


Gail Lumet Buckley is an American writer and the author of three books—The Hornes: An American Family (1986); Blacks in Uniform: From Bunker Hill to Desert Storm (2001); and The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family (2016).

Buckley was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Louis Jones, a publisher, and Lena Horne, the famed singer and Hollywood's first black movie star. As Horne's career took off, she left Gail and Gail's younger brother "Little Teddy" behind in Pittsburgh to pursue work in New York. The marriage ultimately failed, and Teddy remained in Pittsburgh at his father's insistence; Gail, however, went with her mother. The two traveled between New York and California, eventually settling in California where Gail attended an all white school. She was classmates with Natalie Wood and the children of various Hollywood luminaries.

When her mother remarried Lennie Hayton, a white composer and conductor, the family moved back to New York where interracial marriage was legal. Gail was thrust into a glittering society of Hollywood celebrities, luxury ocean liners, posh European hotels, and exclusive watering holes. She received a superior education from a private Quaker school in upstate New York and headed off to Harvard.

Yet despite this privileged existence, Gail and her parents were not immune to racism. As she wrote in The Hornes: "We actually left home because of race and politics.” And the Quaker school she attended was chosen because few other private American boarding schools accepted black students.

After graduating from Harvard in 1959, Gail worked as a journalist, including stints at Marie-Claire in Paris and Life magazine. It was at Life that she met her first husband, Sidney Lumet, a well known TV and movie director. They married in 1963, had two children, and split their time between New York and London in support of Sydney's career. The marriage ended in 1978. Five years later, Gail married her second husband, Kevin Buckley, and began to devote herself to writing.

In addition to her three books, Gail has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, New York Daily News, Washington Post, Vogue, Playboy, and People. (Adapted from encyclopedia.com and the publisher. Retrieved 2/14/2016.)