Kelly Lytle Hernandez
Professor Kelly Lytle Hernández is a professor of History, African American Studies, and Urban Planning at UCLA where she holds The Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History. One of the nation’s leading experts on race, immigration, and mass incarceration, she is the author of the award-winning books Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010), City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), and Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands (W. W. Norton, 2022). Her forthcoming book, Still Racist: U.S. Immigration Control since 1790, will be published by W. W. Norton in 2026. From 2017 to 2021, Professor Lytle Hernández served as the director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. As director of the Bunche Center, she led an unprecedented fundraising campaign and launched the Bunche Fellows Program. Professor Lytle Hernandez was also the founding director of the Million Dollar Hoods (MDH) research initiative, which maps fiscal and human cost of mass incarceration in Los Angeles. She now serves as a principal advisor to MDH. For her historical and contemporary work, Professor Lytle Hernández was named a 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. She is also an elected member of the Society of American Historians, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Pulitzer Prizes Board.
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Awards
2010 Clements Prize for Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol
Honorable Mention, 2011 Lora Romero First Book Prize, American Studies Association
Honorable Mention, 2011 John Hope Franklin Book Prize, American Studies Association
Finalist, 2011 First Book Prize from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians
2007 Oscar O. Winther Award for the best article to appear in the Western Historical Quarterly.
2007 Bolton-Kinnaird Award for best article on the Spanish borderlands.
Selected Publications
“Hobos in Heaven: Race, Incarceration, and the Rise of Los Angeles, 1880 – 1910,” Pacific Historical Review v 83, n 3 (August 2014)
“Amnesty or Abolition: Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement,” Boom: A Journal of California (Winter 2011).
MIGRA! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010)
“An Introduction to el Archivo Histórico del Instituto Nacional de Migración,” co-authored with Pablo Yankelevich, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies v 34, n 1 (Spring 2009), 157-168.
“Persecuted Like Criminals”: The Politics of Labor Emigration and Mexican Migration Controls in the 1920s and 1930s,” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies v 34, n 1 (Spring 2009), 219-239.
“The Crimes and Consequences of Illegal Immigration: A Cross-Border Examination of Operation Wetback, 1943-1954,” Western Historical Quarterly (Winter 2006), 421-444.
“Ni blancos ni negros: mexicanos y el papel de la patrulla fronteriza estadounidense en la definición de una nueva categoría racial, 1924-1940,” Cuicuilco v 11, n 31 (Mayo-Agosto 2004): 85-104.
Mexican Immigration to the United States, 1900 – 1999: A Sourcebook for Teachers, published by the National Center for History in the Schools (Fall 2002).
