Alma Adams

Alma Adams traces her hat habit to her grandmother's advice to cover her head; when she entered Congress in 2014, she told NPR she owned 900.¹ Her mother worked as a domestic worker, and Adams raised two children, including a daughter who also became a teacher.²

Adams earned bachelor's and master's degrees in art education at North Carolina A&T and a doctorate in art education and multicultural education at Ohio State.² She taught art at Bennett College for 40 years, organizing student marches to the polls.³ Her political career began on Greensboro's school board, where she was its first Black woman member, followed by the City Council and state House.³

She entered Congress after a November 2014 special election and now serves on Agriculture and Education and Workforce.³ She helped establish the Black Maternal Health Caucus with Lauren Underwood and founded the bipartisan HBCU caucus.³ Adams sponsored the FUTURE Act, enacted in 2019 to permanently authorize funding for minority serving colleges and universities.⁴

Her current priorities include affordable healthcare, housing, food access and education.² She supports paid family and medical leave, a publicly financed single payer healthcare system and stronger support for public schools and HBCUs.² Republican Jack Codiga is challenging her for another term.⁵