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No one who has ever attended Sunday worship
in a Black church can deny the splendor and spectacle of women dressed to the nines with
hats worn ace-deuce. These ladies take the term “biblical proportions”
seriously. When Paul the Apostle decreed that, in order to show respect for God and
authority, women cover their heads in houses of worship, he couldn’t have known what
the Sisters would do with his edict. Ribbons, feathers, rhinestones, netting, beads,
shells, metals and mink are just some of the materials used to adorn their crowning
glories. As far as Black women are concerned, if one must submit to authority, one must do
it on one’s own terms.
In Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats, photographer Michael Cunningham and
journalist Craig Marberry capture the essence of the Black female hat-wearing tradition in
high style. The book features resplendent black and white photography that allows the
character of its subjects to shine. The women are as varied as their taste in hats.
Instead of pairing the portraits with essays or poetry, Marberry chose to include excerpts
from interviews. In her own words, each woman shares moving anecdotes regarding her
journey to hat queendom. The stories are often funny, sometimes sad, and always revealing
and insightful. And although the photographs are first-rate (it would be worth acquiring a
second copy of the book in order to frame some of them), it is the stories that keep the
pages turning. In Crowns, we find the loveliest jewels are not the ones adorning the hats,
but those that can be found in the lives of the women who wear them.
Many of the women tell of watching their mothers and grandmothers toil in plain, unadorned
clothing during the week and the impact of seeing them step out in their finery on
Sundays. Finery that always included a hat. Others recall how donning hats helped them
connect to their loved ones. Adnee Bradford, a 62 year-old university department chair,
says that her father “wasn’t the kind to express his emotions” but when he
would see her in a nice hat, he’d laugh and say “‘Sis, where’d you get
that hat?’ That was his way of saying he liked to see me dressed up … I never
questioned my daddy’s love.”
Carmen Bonham, a 43 year-old funeral director, shares how she came to wear hats to pattern
herself after her mother, “a good mortician’s wife.” When Bonham began
working at her ailing father’s funeral business, not many women were buried wearing
hats, but “these days, we bury more women with their hats on. Some families say,
‘If it don’t work, don’t worry about it.’ But I always make it
work…. You know, if a woman wears a hat all the time, she’s going to look naked
in the casket without one.” Bonham reveals she’d like to be cremated,
“Otherwise, who’d do my hat up right?”
M
December 2000 |
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