The Black Calhouns

Starred review from November 23, 2015
In this thoroughly engaging family chronicle, Buckley (The Hornes) reveals an expansive tapestry of African-American history since the Civil War. The story begins with her great-great-grandfather Moses Calhoun, a freed slave turned businessman. Buckley never loses sight of the broad canvas, even when her mother, singer and actress Lena Horne, “unavoidably becomes the star of the story.” Giants of African-American culture, often personally connected to the Calhouns, move fluidly through the pages, among them W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Walter White. The family itself produced poets, physicians, politicians, military men, educators, and journalists, as well as a gambler and “rake” connected to the 1919 Black Sox scandal. But as Buckley shows, for all of the comfort of their middle-class status, the Calhouns also lived under the shadow of lynchings, riots, and racist legislation. With branches in both New York City and Atlanta, the family was involved with Reconstruction politics in the South and Depression-era Communist organizing in the North, as well as the civil rights movement. Ever-present details of domestic life (courtship, marriage, children, family squabbles, divorces) hold the sprawling tale together. Buckley’s awesomely informative shout-out to the Calhouns is a treat to read. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow and Nesbit.

November 1, 2015
A detailed pursuit of the author's ancestors, from the South to the North. Through the prism of her distant family's story, Buckley (American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm, 2002, etc.), the daughter of Lena Horne, fleshes out a middle-class black family's journey of hard work, education, and aspiration in a deeply racist United States. Her narrative begins at the time of emancipation for patriarch Moses Calhoun, an educated former butler on a plantation in Atlanta, Georgia, who began to climb the ladder of success in 1865 by marrying, opening a grocery store, buying property, and becoming "a pillar of Atlanta's black community." His daughters, Cora and Lena, were educated in the missionary-run schools at the apex of Reconstruction, just as the Jim Crow laws instituting segregation were taking effect in Tennessee and elsewhere. Cora married the handsome, twice-widowed teacher and Republican activist journalist Edwin Horn in 1888 and moved to New York City in 1896, part of the great Northern migration of the Talented Tenth (W.E.B. Du Bois' name for the country's highly educated blacks). Edwin would switch party affiliations and become a "political New Negro," a Democrat, and leader of the so-called Black Tammany; the couple joined the Brooklyn bourgeoisie and the NAACP. With the birth of their granddaughter, Lena Calhoun Horne, in 1917, the story inevitably follows the rising star of the author's mother, largely abandoned by her parents and raised by her grandmother, Cora, through the heady Harlem Prohibition years (also the height of lynchings in the South). While Lena's dark skin was both a hindrance and help to her career (too dark for the white stage, too white for the black), she found her movie-star spot during World War II. The author later weaves her own story of 1960s political awakening into this thoroughly jam-packed narrative of history and nostalgia. Contains several memoirs in one: ambitious, relentless, and occasionally messy.

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Starred review from February 1, 2016
Although it was illegal to teach a slave to read and write, Dr. Andrew Bonaparte Calhoun wanted a sophisticated butler, and so Moses Calhoun, Buckley's great-great-grandfather, became literate and, upon emancipation, a highly successful Atlanta businessman. Lacing her assiduously researched and gracefully written family history into the very fabric of the Republic, Buckley captures the brief sense of possibility for African Americans after the Civil War and the vicious backlash that spawned the Ku Klux Klan (officially designated as a terrorist group in 1870) and Jim Crow (the model for Hitler's race laws). While some of the black Calhouns stayed in Georgia, others migrated to Brooklyn. As Buckley's entrancingly well-told saga of her mixed-race family rolls forward, it is illuminated by the rise of her mother, that bright and dazzling star, singer, and civil rights activist Lena Horne. Abandoned by her stylish gangster father and neglected and endangered by her mother, a frustrated actress, Lena thrived nonetheless, thanks to her indomitable grandmother Cora Calhoun Horne, a teacher, social worker, and activist. As wholly compelling as Lena's story is, Buckley astutely sets her mother's trials and triumphs within a larger mosaic depicting the tragic persistence of racism now manifest manifested? in yet another poisonously reactionary surge, as our first African American president navigates his final year in office. Buckley's superbly realized American family portrait is enthralling and resounding. For more such tales, see Core Collection: Multicultural American Family Histories, p. xx.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2015

Best-selling author Buckley tells the story of her family, starting with her great-great grandfather Moses Calhoun, a former slave who became a successful Atlanta businessman after the Civil War, and continuing to the present. Expect mention of Buckley's famous mother, iconic singer and actress Lena Horne.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2015

Buckley (The Hornes: An American Family), the daughter of actress and civil rights activist Lena Horne, writes here about her family history. Starting with Moses Calhoun, a freed slave in Georgia, the author traces Moses's descendents through two branches, one that stayed in Atlanta and the other that migrated to New York. The Calhouns were a largely successful "Talented Tenth" family that valued education. Buckley focuses primarily on her great-grandmother Cora Calhoun Horne, a well-known clubwoman with the NAACP and the YWCA in Brooklyn. Widely admired, Cora was estranged from her husband, Edwin, who was involved in the Tammany Hall machine. While praising her activist and professional family members, Buckley is also candid about those who gambled, drank, and were abusive. Although the author sometimes loses focus by including each major event in post-Civil War black history, whether relating to her family or not, the book comes alive when she discusses the life of her famous mother and her own childhood. VERDICT This personal and historical account covers much of the same ground as Buckley's previous book, The Hornes; fans of Lena Horne will enjoy. [See Prepub Alert, 8/24/15.]--Kate Stewart, U.S. Senate Lib., Washington, D.C.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2015

The daughter of actress Lena Horne, Buckley clarifies African American history by telling the stories of the Atlanta and, eventually, Brooklyn branches of her family. Her previous titles include The Hornes: An American Family, which was made into a PBS American Masters documentary, and the national best seller American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm, which received the 2002 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. A push at the PLA and ALA conferences next year.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2015

Buckley (The Hornes: An American Family), the daughter of actress and civil rights activist Lena Horne, writes here about her family history. Starting with Moses Calhoun, a freed slave in Georgia, the author traces Moses's descendents through two branches, one that stayed in Atlanta and the other that migrated to New York. The Calhouns were a largely successful "Talented Tenth" family that valued education. Buckley focuses primarily on her great-grandmother Cora Calhoun Horne, a well-known clubwoman with the NAACP and the YWCA in Brooklyn. Widely admired, Cora was estranged from her husband, Edwin, who was involved in the Tammany Hall machine. While praising her activist and professional family members, Buckley is also candid about those who gambled, drank, and were abusive. Although the author sometimes loses focus by including each major event in post-Civil War black history, whether relating to her family or not, the book comes alive when she discusses the life of her famous mother and her own childhood. VERDICT This personal and historical account covers much of the same ground as Buckley's previous book, The Hornes; fans of Lena Horne will enjoy. [See Prepub Alert, 8/24/15.]--Kate Stewart, U.S. Senate Lib., Washington, D.C.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.