The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family - Hardcover

Buckley, Gail Lumet

3.66

238 ratings by Goodreads

9780802124548: The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802124542 ISBN 13: 9780802124548

Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, 2016

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In The Black Calhouns, Gail Lumet Buckley--daughter of actress Lena Horne--delves deep into her family history, detailing the experiences of an extraordinary African-American family from Civil War to Civil Rights. Beginning with her great-great grandfather Moses Calhoun, a house slave who used the rare advantage of his education to become a successful businessman in post-war Atlanta, Buckley follows her family's two branches: one that stayed in the South, and the other that settled in Brooklyn. Through the lens of her relatives' momentous lives, Buckley examines major events throughout American history. From Atlanta during Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance, and then from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement, this ambitious, brilliant family witnessed and participated in the most crucial events of the 19th and 20th centuries. Combining personal and national history, The Black Calhouns is a unique and vibrant portrait of six generations during dynamic times of struggle and triumph.

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Review:

Praise for The Black Calhouns

"[A] panoramic view of American society . . . Written in the style of a sweeping historical novel . . . This is history from the inside . . . Buckley charts the generational branches of black Calhouns painstakingly, as though making up for the lost stories of so many other African-Americans left on the cutting room floor. There is an insistence in her meticulously detailed recollections: We were here! We were there! Do not forget!" --New York Times Book Review

"The challenge of reviewing extraordinary books is that they leave one grasping for words. This is certainly the case with Gail Lumet Buckley's The Black Calhouns, a stunning saga of her gifted and privileged family . . . The book's ultimate magic derives from the way the history of black America can be viewed through their story . . . [Buckley's] command of her subject is vast; her narrative skill, masterful." --Boston Globe

"The story of Buckley's ancestors is fascinating for many reasons. Her candid portraits of their experiences offer a window onto shameful episodes in American history that are more recent and relevant than many realize. The stories also represent at least a proxy for the untold stories of so many others whose lives have been conveniently forgotten, excised from national consciousness . . . Buckley's moving chronicle, like Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, should be read in schools across the country." --Christian Science Monitor

"A history cum memoir by Lena Horne's daughter tells the story of her forebears--'six generations of an atypical African American family that is also typically American.' The story begins with the life of Horne's great-grandfather, a Georgia house slave named Moses, and ends with the author's own experiences at mid-century, encompassing along the way Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the growth and splitting of the Calhoun clan: one branch stays in Georgia, the other moves to New York. Placing the story against a backdrop of historical shifts eloquently conveys . . . how politics and prejudice can shape a family." --New Yorker

"[An] assiduously researched and gracefully written family history . . . entrancingly well-told . . . Buckley's superbly realized American family portrait is enthralling and resounding." --Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

"In this thoroughly engaging family chronicle, Buckley reveals an expansive tapestry of African American history . . . [her] awesomely informative shout-out to the Calhouns is a treat to read." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Gail Lumet Buckley's family portrait reminds us how personal African American history still is. From Reconstruction and the triumph of Jim Crow in the South to World War II and the beginnings of mass political activism for equality--Buckley relates black survival and progress through the experiences of her ambitious, complicated family." --Darryl Pinckney, author of Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature and Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy

"Deeply personal and historically significant." --David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize winning author of King: A Biography and W. E. B. Du Bois, 1919-1963: The Fight for Equality and the American Century

"Gail Lumet Buckley has written another important piece of history; this one about her Calhoun family beginning with her ancestor Moses, who spent a part of his life as a slave. Once freed after the Civil War, Moses became a businessman and founded a family of strong educated women, who kept their families and communities together. It is the history of her extraordinary family in a wider context of Reconstruction, the struggles against Jim Crow and for civil rights." --Frances FitzGerald, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Fire in the Lake

"Not just a family story but an utterly gripping panorama of American life, a passionate, eloquent, and powerful work of history and memoir. Through wars and dubious peace, in the Deep South, in Hollywood, Washington, and New York, the Calhoun family has been at the center of an unending, often bloody and tragic struggle for justice." --Henry Wiencek, author of The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography

"Buckley brings her luminous style to her luminous family in a compelling story that blends deep historical research with a sure sense of the context of race, politics and entertainment in the late 19th and 20th Centuries. It's her history, but ours, too." --Jonathan Alter, author of the New York Times bestseller The Promise: President Obama, Year One

"Strong men wept when Lena Horne, Gail Lumet Buckley's legendary mother, gave the crowd 'Stormy Weather.' Reading this clear-eyed, bright-hearted family epic, you're liable to shed tears of your own, for the story of Gail and Lena and the black Calhouns is the story of our nation." --Benjamin Taylor, author of Naples Declared and editor of There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction of Saul Bellow

"Readers are fortunate that Gail Buckley did not move to Paris--as she once threatened John F. Kennedy she would--but instead remained in America to research and write this beautiful and moving account of her family--half of whom stayed in the South while the rest moved North--whose courage, perseverance, and accomplishments allowed them to endure and even thrive during a shameful and overlooked period in America's deeply troubling racist history." --Lily Tuck, author of The Double Life of Liliane

About the Author:

Gail Lumet Buckley is the author of the national bestsellers American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm, and The Hornes: An American Family, which became a PBS "American Masters" documentary. She has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, New York Daily News, Washington Post, Vogue, Playboy, and People.

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