Gail Lumet Buckley, the daughter of the late Lena Horne and a journalist and author, who wrote two books about the history of her Black middle-class family, died on July 18. She was 86.

Her daughter Jenny Lumet, a screenwriter and producer, told The New York Times she died at her home in Santa Monica, California, due to heart failure.

Born on Dec. 21, 1937, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Buckley grew up in Brooklyn and Los Angeles. Rather than follow her in her mother’s footsteps in Hollywood, she went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Radcliffe College in Massachusetts in 1959.

She spent some time working in Paris as an intern at Marie Claire magazine before returning to the United States, serving as a counselor with the National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students.

Buckley was then hired at Life magazine in 1962. Later in her journalism career, she also wrote contributing articles for The New York Times,...