Mary E. Pattillo

Pattillo has made pioneering interventions in the study of race, class, urban inequality, housing, and criminal justice. She is the foremost expert on the Black middle class and the author of two award-winning books—Black Picket Fences and Black on the Block.  She is also co-editor of Imprisoning America, one of the first volumes on the collateral consequences of mass incarceration. Pattillo has won awards from the Ford, Fulbright, Spencer, and MacArthur Foundations, and is a Trustee of the WT Grant Foundation. She is a founding board member of Urban Prep Academies, a network of public charter high schools for young men in Chicago.