Kelly Lytle Hernández is a MacArthur Genius

Rebel Historian Who Reframes History Receives MacArthur 'Genius' Grant

September 25, 2019

On how and why she created a 'rebel archive'

With my most recent book, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, which is about the rise of mass incarceration in Los Angeles, I developed something called the "rebel archive."

The rebel archive is ... the records that have been authored by the people who have fought policing and incarceration across centuries [including court records]. ... Even cases that make it all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. It's also records that — by the grace of God — have somehow evaded destruction by law enforcement authorities over the centuries. And so it's a rebel archive because it has survived to tell the tale of what happened, and how it happened, and why.