'Crowns' celebrates church hats, and the women who wear them

Savor a proud African-American tradition

Cassandra Patterson-Brown passes on this advice: If your hair is permed, don't wear a wool hat unless it's lined

In this story:  • Visit the gallery Not camera-shy Tales about life From straw to silk Remembering Mom RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Thurston Hatcher
CNN.com Writer

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Peggy Knox has a few words of advice for anyone who wants to handle her hat.

"Don't do it. Not the hat. The only person who'd touch a woman's hat is someone who doesn't wear hats," she says in the new book "Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats." "Admire it from a distance, honey."

The self-described "hat queen" is one of 50 similarly passionate women featured in the book, which explores the African-American tradition of wearing elegant, elaborate, sometimes over the-top hats into their houses of worship.

	GALLERY
Every hat has a story

"Observing the tradition from the outside, it looks like it's about looking fine in a big fancy hat," co-author Craig Marberry said. "But it's about more than that."

Photographer Michael Cunningham conceived the idea for a hat book more than two years ago while talking to a friend, who had witnessed an astonishing array of hats at a family reunion.

"It's like a light went off right at that moment," said Cunningham, who lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "I could see my project. I knew I had something. I literally started working on it that next day."

Cunningham quickly spread the word about his project, and it didn't take long to find women willing to be photographed. Shy they were not.

"Back when I got my first hat, some stores were 'Whites Only.' That made you want to go in," says Nancy Carpenter

"The women are flamboyant; they really have a real high self-esteem," he said. "They're real proud."

Originally, he planned to pair the photos with poems. But when Marberry, a writer, heard about the project through a mutual friend, he contacted Cunningham and eagerly signed on.

Marberry interviewed every woman Cunningham photographed, distilling their comments into two-page, first-person accounts.

"These aren't hat stories," he said. "They're stories about life and love and loss, about faith, folklore, about redemption. And some of them are about winking at life every now and then."

The hat-wearing tradition has its origins in the Bible, as the book notes in a passage from I Corinthians 11:5: "Every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head."

Marberry suggested that black women's donning of elaborate hats is more than just a fashion statement.

"After slavery, and, I think, as a black middle class began to emerge, the elaborate headgear symbolized God's blessing in your life," he said. "The more elaborate your hat, the grander your statement of God's blessing in your life," he said.

The hat also tells the world that its wearer is part of a Sunday sorority, writes Maya Angelou in the foreword.

She "leaves home and joins the company of her mothers and aunties and sisters and nieces and daughters at church whose actions had been identical to hers that morning," the author and poet writes. "Now they stroll up and down the aisles of the church, stars of splendor, beauty beyond measure. Black ladies in hats."

Cunningham and Marberry fully explored the tradition, featuring women of all ages, and from a variety of backgrounds.

"If the hats liked what the preacher said, they'd bob up and down. If the hats liked a song, they'd sway from side to side. If a hat thought you were talking too loud, it would whip around in your direction. And if a hat was really angry with you, its brim would dip just above a mother's eyes, and those could be some fierce eyes."
-- Beth Hopkins, recalling hats she saw in church while growing up in Petersburg, Virginia

"There were no criteria at all except that a woman wear a hat or enjoy wearing hats," Marberry said.

Those hats -- costing from $35 to $800 -- are made of everything from straw and felt to silk and fur.

Despite their splendor, Cunningham opted for black-and-white photos over color.

"I always knew I wanted it to be in black-and-white because I didn't want a fashion book," he said, adding that color would have been too distracting. "I wanted you to be able to study the women and hats as a whole."

Marberry had nearly finished interviewing one woman when, at the last moment, he asked her what her favorite hat was.

"We just know inside that we're queens. And these are the crowns we wear," says Felecia McMillan. McMillan enjoys wearing African gelee headwraps to connect with her heritage

After a moment of hesitation, Gloria Swindell told him about the mink hat with a satin band, and the mother who once wore it.

Swindell, whose mother abandoned her as an infant, recalled how she and her siblings would see their mother at church, always attractive in her beautiful dresses and hats, but always distant.

Years later, after the mother had taken the children back in, she motioned them to a closet and encouraged them to pick out their favorite hats. Swindell chose the mink, which she used to admire on her mom from afar.

A month later, her mother died of breast cancer.

"They say I look like Mama in my hats," Swindell says in the book. "Sometimes, in church, I find myself sitting where she sat. And I wear that mink hat like she used to wear it, tilted to the side a little.

"One Sunday, my cousin said, 'I know that hat. I remember your mama wore that hat, girl.' I said, 'Yeah, I remember too.'"

When the book was published earlier this year, Cunningham and Marberry invited all of the participants to a party and gave each a copy.

"They were giving us these incredible bear hugs, and my ribs are still aching from all of those bear hugs," Marberry said.

"It was so beautiful, because I knew they weren't just embracing what we had done. They were embracing us as men. And they appreciated the fact that we, as black men, had done something to elevate black women."

A present-ation of perusable pages: Your holiday gift guide
November 27,
Designer Tam goes home for 'China Chic'
November 20, 2000
Dear Fashion Police: Traveling with hats
July 5, 2000

Doubleday

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.