Trying on hats with U.S. Congresswoman Alma Adams and her legendary collection

Video by Lara Americo

She wore a brown derby on Air Force One, a rare Oscar de la Renta fedora in leopard and red while getting arrested.

U.S. Congresswoman Alma Adams has a hat for every occasion.

The former N.C. General Assembly representative and retired art history professor at Bennett College is not afraid to stand – or sit during this past June’s gun control protest in Congress – for education, civil rights or equality in style, especially during her current reelection campaign in the 12th Congressional District, which she has represented since 2014.

Adams graciously took me through a mere fraction of her entire hat collection. And each one had a different, often colorful story.

On the 35-year-old brown derby: In April 15, 2015, Adams flew with President Barack Obama into Charlotte as he was going to a town hall with women bloggers. She and him talked about pay equity and what could be done to help women achieve equal pay. She fondly remembers eating lunch and dinner onboard. “It’s a wonderful vehicle,” she said, adding, “I got to make several phone calls from Air Force One!”

On the blue hat she wore on the day of Congress’ gun legislation sit-in: “You’re sleeping on the floor, you’re sleeping on a chair, and it’s always cold in the chamber, seriously cold,” she said. “It wasn’t a moment, it was a movement, it is a movement, and it’s going to continue.”

She also gave some personal, fast hat facts:

Hats can keep you healthy. Adams started wearing hats as a young girl when she went to Sunday church. When developed allergies, she said her grandmother advised her this way: “You know if you cover that noggin, you’ll keep the heat in your head and you won’t get sick so much.” Adams sees this as a true theory. “My allergies have improved,” she said. “I don’t have to take allergy shots anymore.”

Hats are not allowed on the floor of the House. “I don’t know why that is, it’s discriminatory as far as I’m concerned, they probably never expected women to be there,” she said. She has to take off her hat and leave it in the Democratic Cloakroom. (Yes, there’s a Republican and Democratic Cloakroom.)

It seemed she needed a hard hat during the debate over her residency. Adams only had 100-150 of her 1,022-plus hat collection in her Charlotte home when I visited recently, stoking the flames of her residency controversy. Well, maybe I did for dramatic effect, since a Congressional representative doesn’t legally have to live in the district he/she represents.

Lawmakers redrew the 1st and 12th District lines when three federal judges ruled they violated the Voting Rights Act and were unconstitutionally drawn based on racial lines, otherwise known as gerrymandering.

This means in January 2017, the 12th District will no longer encompass bits of Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Lexington, Salisbury, Concord and High Point, and will only include Mecklenburg County, turning the shape of Adams’ district from a snake into a blobfish.

Adams moved from Greensboro to Charlotte’s Fourth Ward in April. Her place to me appears as lived in as someone who’s only been there less than three months and hasn’t moved in all of their stuff.

Why the controversy at all? “I think it also was a way of manipulating the process to the point that you confused voters,” she said. “We won just about every precinct in the current 12th district.”

Hats off to Alma — well, only if I want to excite my allergies. *Puts hat back on*

Editor’s note: Adams’ Republican opponent, Leon Threatt, has agreed to a separate interview about his campaign, which will appear in CharlotteFive soon.