The "Hat Ladies" of New Pilgrim Baptist Church.

• Author: Hobbs, Robert
• Position: Religion - Julie Moos' portraits honor their importance as cultural leaders and celebrate their desire to praise the Lord each Sunday

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...