Hand-drawn chess board made by Herman Wallace while incarcerated: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

A hand-drawn paper chess board (a), the two-page contextual story of “The Chess Tournament” (b) and (c), created by Herman Wallace while incarcerated at Angola Prison. The black-and-white shaded chess board (a), sketched on a large white paper, features a handwritten number for each of the 64 squares drawn. The first page of "The Chess Tournament" (b), 132 and 133, printed with black text across two columns, outlines the results of Herman’s 34 cent chess tournament. The second page (b), 134, concludes the thoughts from the first page, with a black-and-white graphic design collage depicting two hands shaking and a young man with his head held up, surrounded by various chunks of sentences. The pages were printed on January 24th 2003.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: after 1972
• Created by: Herman Wallace, American, 1941 - 2013
• Subject of: Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, American, founded 1835
• Type: chess sets
• Type: make-dos
• Medium: (a): graphite on paper (fiber product)
• Medium: (b), (c): ink paper (fiber product)
• Dimensions: H x W (a): 8 7/16 × 1 1/8 in. (21.5 × 2.8 cm)
• Dimensions: L x W (b): 8 × 11 in. (20.3 × 27.9 cm)
• Dimensions: L x W (c): 8 × 11 in. (20.3 × 27.9 cm)
• Place used: Angola, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: American South
• Topic: Communities
• Topic: Men
• Topic: Mental health
• Topic: Prisons
• Topic: Recreation
• Object number: A2018.36.1.12.2abc
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Maria Hinds
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The underlying object's rights statement is: No Known Copyright Restrictions Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.