The Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law

Menu

Kelly Lytle Hernandez

Professor of History and Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair of History

Kelly Lytle Hernandez is a professor of History, African American Studies, and Urban Planning at UCLA where she holds the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History and is the director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. One of the nation’s leading experts on race, immigration, and mass incarceration, Professor Lytle Hernandez is the author of the award-winning books, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010), and City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles (University of North Carolina Press, 2017).  Currently, Professor Lytle Hernandez is completing a new book on the magonista movement, which helped to spark the outbreak of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, and she is the Principal Investigator for Million Dollar Hoods, a university-based, community-drive research project that maps the fiscal and human cost of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. For her leadership of Million Dollar Hoods, Professor Lytle Hernandez has won numerous awards, including the 2018 Local Hero Award from KCET/PBS, a 2018 Freedom Now! Award from the Los Angeles Community Action Network, and the 2019 Catalyst Award from the South L.A. parent/student advocacy organization, CADRE. For her historical and contemporary work, Professor Lytle Hernandez has been named a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She is also an elected member of the Society of American Historians and the Pulitzer Prize Board.