The "Hat Ladies" of New Pilgrim Baptist Church

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 2004 by Robert Hobbs

These women are paired together in portraits that honor their importance as cultural leaders and celebrate their desire to praise the Lord each Sunday, crowned with stunning headresses of fur, felt, or straw, which are adorned with feathers, artificial flowers, or clusters of sparkling sequins and rhinestones.

THE SENIOR SISTERS of Birmingham, Alabama's New Pilgrim Baptist Church, located in the African-American community of Ensley, are called "the hat sisters or ladies" in deference to their stunning crowns of fur, felt, and straw. These special creations are customarily adorned with festoons of feathers, cascades of artificial flowers, or bold assemblies of sequins and rhinestones. The regal headdresses attest to the churchgoers' desire to glorify their heavenly Savior each Sunday by outfitting themselves in the most splendid possible raiment.

Although their numbers account for only about five percent of New Pilgrim's entire congregation of 1,300 members, the hat ladies--a self-selected group whose bid to membership is ratified by their decision to wear sumptuous headgear--are conspicuously present each Sunday. One member of this informal club, in particular, Mrs. Pleasant, is gently ribbed by her peers for being "Missy 11:30" because she provides a distinct focal point to this special assembly's requisite pageantry by making a dramatic entrance a full half-hour after service has begun.

Now the oldest generation of a rapidly disappearing matriarchal culture, the hat ladies of New Pilgrim are particularly noteworthy representatives of a nationwide African-American phenomenon. The ones seen in Julie Moos' photographs mostly are retired service industry workers who have been employed as nurses, domestics, and sales clerks in stores appealing mainly to black customers. Fiercely proud, many of them have earned the long-term respect of their fellow parishioners for decades of good deeds that include supporting the church, looking after the sick, and raising money for college scholarships.

Some of them participated in the passage of meaningful Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s by helping to initiate a decade earlier the registration of black voters. At the height of the movement, they were in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and thus intimately involved in many events crucial to its success.

The senior sisters' hats are showy and intentionally expensive. Often they are priced at several hundred dollars apiece. They might be seen as their generation's equivalent to the current New York City penchant for shoes, particularly designs by Prada and Manolo Blahnik that are equally expensive and that have similarly inspired collections numbering from dozens to even hundreds of examples. Designed primarily for an African-American clientele, the churchgoers' hats, can be found in a number of Birmingham stores: the specialty shop culled "Fifth Avenue Hats" is a favorite place, and Cotton's Department Store in Ensley is another. From time to time, Cotton's will feature trunk showings by such popular New York designers as George Zamau'l, who sells hats for $200 and up, wholesale. It is a common practice for the senior sisters to place expensive items on layaway for months, even years, and pay for them in installments.

Not content with a special hat for each season, many church ladies have succumbed over the years to the temptation of collecting great numbers of these creations so that their Sundays become fashion opportunities for modeling new designs, and bringing special reserved treasures out of storage. One of the hat ladies, Mrs. Carr, who sold hats for Cotton's, has assembled a collection of over 300 such items that she lovingly and meticulously curates, storing them carefully in their original boxes that adorn shelf after shelf in her home. These collections often represent a lifetime of collecting.

Choosing a creation to wear on a particular Sunday is a serious and concerted undertaking for Mrs. Carr and other members of her group. It involves taking into consideration the total outfit, the season, the known hats of other senior sisters, as well as the dresser's own spiritual mood. Dressing for church is not only an occasion, it is a theatrical event and a moment of grace in which the very real issues of old age, diminishing resources, and concerns about family members briefly are put aside. Mrs. Bryant has described in poignant detail the tremendous boost she receives each week when she dresses for church. Suffering from a number of health problems, she often wonders if she will be able to participate in services. Yet, once she decides on a hat, coordinates it with a compatible outfit, and makes herself up, she begins to feel well enough to complete her ensemble by slipping on three-inch heels!

Although Moos knew neither of these elaborate proscriptions and prescriptions nor the highly elaborate rituals of the hat ladies, she definitely was intrigued when Elias Hendricks--a member of New Pilgrim and a recently elected Birmingham city councilman--invited her to photograph the senior sisters. She remembers that he wanted her to make a historical record of them, something that could be shown at the Smithsonian Institution.