Church Hats at Mt. Zion

by Ann White


When I get dressed to go to church, I'm going to meet the King, so I must look my best.
-Addie Webster, from Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats

I walk into Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church for the 11 a.m. Easter Sunday service and I am swimming bareheaded in a sea of hats. Many of the women here today are wearing hats, and they are dressed to the nines. When I say dressed to the nines, I mean that their hats, dresses, and shoes match.

Felecia McMillan, one of the women featured in Crowns: A Portrait of Black Women in Church Hats, says "African Americans do very African things without even knowing it. Adorning the head is one of those things, whether it's the
intricate braids or the distinct hairstyles or the beautiful hats we wear on Sundays. We just know inside that we are queens. And these are the crowns we wear" (2000).

Maybe this is where my own love for hats comes from. Watching the parade of hats, I am fascinated and awed that these women have the audacity to strut their ethnicity in such a way.

About mid-way through the service, a woman strolls in wearing one of the best looking hats I've ever seen. I do a double take. Heads turn. The hat is a silver lamé, pillbox with a silver net that sort of fans out over her forehead. In the center of the net is a silver rose.

Uh-oh, I think. Where did she get that hat!? I know I've got to ask her about it. I can hardly wait until after the service. I keep an eye on her through the rest of the service to make sure she doesn't get away from me.

After the service, I corner her and ask if it is all right to take a picture of her hat. I find out that her name is Carol Bernard. She seems flattered. She smiles and at first I think she is shy. Another woman, who also is wearing a nice hat, stops and says to Carol: "Girl, you are wearing that hat!"

Carole tilts her head slightly and says: "You think so? I wasn't too sure about it." She reminds me of the way my mother used to act when she thought she was looking really good.

"That is a nice hat," the lady says to Carol. "It's you. It looks good on you."

The hat does look good on Carol. A petite, attractive woman, she is wearing a black dress and shoes with a silver pin on her left shoulder. Maybe she couldn't find a silver dress and shoes to match the hat.

The woman leaves and Carol and I return to our conversation. I take out my digital camera, and Carol falls into a pose that I think makes her look extremely sophisticated. Regal. She takes a few minutes to affect the right smile, sort of Mona Lisa-like.

After taking a couple of pictures, I ask her where she got the hat. What I thought was shyness falls away. I am beginning to wonder if she was late for church on purpose, to show off her hat.

"I got it from Linda Sanders," she says. "She picked it out for me."



Many of the women in the church buy hats from Sanders. Sanders has a cousin in Virginia who designs the hats.

"Did you see it and decide that it was a hat that you wanted?" I ask Carol.

"No, she picked it out for me," Carol says. "She said it fit me."

"It's gorgeous," I say. "It does fit you."

"Do you really think so?" she asks, tilting her head again and lightly touching the sides of her hat. "I wasn't too sure about it."

She doesn't wear it like she "wasn't too sure" of it. I don't thing that head-tilting thing is natural. The hat is arranged so that it is slightly slanted when she tilts her head. When she tilts her head in this way, it does remind me of a crown.

"So, you like hats?" I ask.

"I love them," she says. "I have boxes of them stacked up in my closet."

"Do you wear all of them," I ask.

"Yes," she says. "But you wear them according to the seasons. You only wear certain ones during certain seasons."

By this time, Pearl Gill has joined us. I had asked Pearl earlier if I could take a photo of her hat. She is wearing a pink straw hat with a huge brim, and a bow-like thing on the top. The bow-like thing is made of pink straw too. The hat is so big that I bump into the brim when I bend down to pick up my camera.

Pearl seems a little embarrassed by this.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she says. "This hat is so big. I wasn't sure about it, but I was going to wear it anyway."

Pearl says her sister, who is a minister, gave it to her. Pearl looks good in the hat. I think it is marvelous that is so huge. It's what my mother would have called "loud," and its size kind of matches Pearl's personality. I also notice that her pink, two-piece suit matches the hat. I look down at her feet
and see that she is wearing pink shoes.

"This hat can fly," she says. "Once when my sister was preaching, she got wound up in the pulpit, she went one way and the hat went the other. It flew across the pulpit." We all laugh.

I am envious. "I love hats," I say to them. "But I'm afraid to wear them because I don't know how to wear them."

"Just put it on," Pearl says to me. "You don't have to do anything. You'll be hooked."

"You don't wear the hat," Carol says, "the hat wears you. You don't even have to comb your hair."

I suppose I don't have the confidence these women have. Where do they get the nerve to wear such elaborate hats? Is that also part of their ethnicity? If so, why don't I have it? Well, there was that Easter Sunday back in the late 1980s when I wore a straw hat with a little brim to church. I had pulled a
bunch of wild roses off my mother's bush and stuck them in the brim. I thought it looked cute, but I was so self-conscious about the hat that I never wore it again.

"Why do you wear hats?" I ask.

It's tradition, they both say. Their mothers, aunts and sisters wore hats to church. They also top off the outfit, they say. It's the finishing touch. You're not completely dressed until you put the hat on.

My mother, grandmother and aunts wore hats to church. As far back as I can remember, my grandmother (my mother's mother) wore hats to church, but my mother and her sisters wore them less and less after the 1960s.

This seemed to be a trend in the churches I attended in Arkansas. After 1970, mostly elderly women wore hats to church. One of the last times I saw my mother wear a hat
was at her mother's funeral in 1975.

"But like this," I ask, "the way they wear them here?"

"What do you mean?" Pearl asks.

"I've seen women wear hats, but not like this," I say gesturing around the church. "The women in my church in Arkansas wore hats, but these women wear some hats."

"We've always worn hats like this," Carole says. "The women in this church have always been big on hats."

"Do you wear them any other places?" I ask.

Some places, they say. I know that black women wear hats to funerals and maybe graduations, but the best looking hats are worn to church.

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Ann White
Graduate Student,
Department of Journalism & Mass Communication
University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa

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