Prison issue baseball cap with black panther drawing worn by Herman Wallace

This prison-issued baseball cap belonged to Herman Wallace, who wore it during his incarceration at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison, where he spent over four decades in solitary confinement. After his arrest in the late 1960s on an armed robbery charge, Wallace was held with members of the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panther Party, who were awaiting trial after a violent police raid at the Desire Projects. Inspired by their politics, he soon joined the Party and, after his transfer to Angola, allied with fellow Panthers Albert Woodfox and Robert Hillary King to form an Angola Prison chapter. Together, they organized direct action protests against Angola's inhumane conditions.

Wallace, Woodfox, and King were later targeted for their activism and falsely convicted of murdering prison officials in 1974, despite a lack of evidence. Known as the Angola Three, they became prolific activists, artists, writers, intellectuals, and global symbols of abolitionism. By hand-drawing a Black Panther Party symbol onto his prison cap, Wallace made a radical political statement--one that risked further punishment and violence. The act demonstrates the power of the Panthers' visual language to spread the Party platform even in the absence of free speech. It also shows how Wallace's resistance, despite enduring one of the longest solitary confinement sentences in U.S. history, transcended prison walls.

The hand-drawn black panther on this prison-issue cap is a marker of Wallace's identity as a Black Panther Party member and an open show of his solidarity and continued fight against racial injustice within the prison system.

An off-white prison-issue baseball cap worn by Herman Wallace while incarcerated at Angola Prison. The cap is personalized with a hand-drawn black panther on the right side of its bill. The plastic adjustment strap on the back of the cap bears the manufacturer’s mark “NISSIN”.