City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771‒1965

Recommended by Tiya Miles, Michael Garvey Professor of History; Radcliffe Alumnae Professor

UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernández reveals the roots of mass incarceration in Los Angeles, the largest urban site of human confinement in the nation. By tracing practices of policing and jailing across discrete historical moments narrated as six stories, she demonstrates that Ronald Reagan’s War on Crime in the 1980s greatly expanded — but did not create — the phenomenon of racially targeted incarceration. Noting that African Americans and Native Americans today face the highest rates of death at the hands of police and the highest rates of confinement across the nation, Hernández digs to uncover why. She relies on what she calls a “rebel archive” made up of songs, coded letters, political notices, maps, and more created by those who challenged forced labor, violent policing, and the targeting of marginalized groups.