As a child growing up in Georgia, African American Mae Reeves wrote plays and sewed doll clothes she’d designed herself. She taught in a one-room school while still a teenager before joining the Great Migration by moving to Chicago and attending the Chicago School of Millinery. Later she relocated to Philadelphia, where she ran her own custom hat-making business. Mae’s clients included famous entertainers like Marian Anderson and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as “housekeepers, teachers, and the faithful church ladies who believed Sunday mornings were for showstoppers.” Her creativity, business prowess, and unfailing generosity made Mae Reeves a pillar in her community. Her shop has been re-created as an exhibit in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History (NMAAHC). The significance of women’s hats in African American history is emphasized throughout this biography: “When a Black woman went out wearing a hat and gloves, there was a chance she’d be shown more respect. Hats were a way for these queens to be SEEN, shing a light on the dignity they always had.” Two pages of additional end matter offer interviews with Mae’s daughter and the Head of Collections at the NMAAHC, as well as photographs of two Mae Reeves’s hats. (Ages 7-10)