Welcome! Imaginary Shirt is a project where I research visual elements from high schools’ histories and then use them to make new t-shirt concepts. If you’re associated with one of these schools and would like to make any of these imaginary shirts a reality, let me know! I’d love to help you accomplish that. This companion newsletter gives some more details on process and on the schools featured. Enjoy!
Instagram Week in Review
Monday, 14 August 2023—Yreka Miners, Yreka, CA

Yreka was home to a movement to make parts of northern California and southern Oregon into a new American state—the State of Jefferson. A territorial assembly was held in Yreka, and a governor was elected. Judging by the newsreel footage, it seemed like the movement was gathering some momentum—and also like maybe the assembly was a bit of a fun day.
And the State of Jefferson people had a lot of faith in the power of that newsreel footage to spread their message. The Siskiyou Daily News reported:
“If the State of Jefferson made a good presentation of its case,” Frank Vail, the Pathe cameraman told us, “Mr. Roosevelt is apt to press a button and say ‘Get me California on the wire.’ And then they’ll start building those roads you need in a hurry.”
The pictures shot here Wednesday and Thursday are being flown to New York by airmail tomorrow, and will be edited and titled over the weekend. A commentator will tell the story of the Jefferson secession, while crowd noises are dubbed in. The newsreel boys call the commentator’s work “the off stage.”
Then the finished prints will be flown back to key cities all over the nation, and released simultaneously in every major theater in the United States the middle of next week.
After four days they’ll move to the second run theater, then the third run, and so on. In all, the Jefferson films will be projected for six weeks, and will wind up in South America, Honolulu, and way points.
All that Jefferson’s supporters had to do was hope that nothing would capture the nation’s attention between the date of the assembly and the date the newsreels would be disseminated.
The date of the Jefferson territorial assembly in Yreka? December 5, 1941.
See more designs from the Yreka set here.
Tuesday, 15 August 2023—McCloud Loggers, McCloud, CA

An item in the November 25, 1938 Dunsmuir News listed eleven new books added to the McCloud High library. The first book listed was called “My Worth to the World,” which appears to be a civics-sort of textbook, and which is available on archive.org here. McCloud seemed to be stocking up on books about civics and citizenship. Flipping through, I enjoyed illustrations like these:


See more designs from the McCloud set here.
Wednesday, 16 August 2023—Mount Shasta Bears, Mount Shasta, CA

Former New York Giant Jason Sehorn went to Mount Shasta. I don’t think I can be the only person who cannot hear his name without thinking “Jason Seahorse,” so I turned to AI to try to get a picture of a cross between a football player and a seahorse. Here is the best I could do with the time that I was willing to give the project (which was very, very litte):

See more designs from the Mount Shasta set here.
Thursday, 17 August 2023—Weed Cougars, Weed, CA

Mort Kaer was the head football coach at Weed for twenty-eight seasons, winning conference championships in seventeen of those seasons. But before that, he was an Olympian and star football player at Southern Cal. He finished sixth in the pentathlon at the 1924 Paris Olympics, and a headline in the April 16, 1927 Sacramento Bee declared, “Morton Kaer, ‘Trojan’ of Red Bluff, Greatest Athlete Ever Produced By Superior California Schools.” He held four USC records (most TDs in a season, most points in a season, most rushing TDs in a career, and most points in a career) until 1969, when all four were broken by O.J. Simpson.
The October 22, 1926 Los Angeles Times reported:
When Morton Kaer, demon quarterback, lines up against California tomorrow the U.S.C. ace will be spurred on to deeds of valor by the presence at the game of his mother, who has never seen her son in action in a big intercollegiate game. Mrs. Kaer left her home in Red Bluff today to attend the contest. She will be accompanied by George Conrad, the man who coached Kaer while he was attending Red Bluff High School.
USC won 27-0. The October 26 Southern California Daily Trojan exclaimed, “Everybody knows what happened at California now. Everybody knows how Mort Kaer blazed his way from one end of the gridiron to the other, leaving death and destruction behind him.” One could only imagine that Mrs. Kaer approved.
See more designs from the Weed set here.
Friday, 18 August 2023—Needham Rockets, Needham, MA

According to the August 2, 2012 Boston Herald, the Needham High football field was instrumental in the plan to ask Olympic gold-medalist and one-time Needham student Aly Raisman to prom. Raisman’s date spelled out “Prom?” in lights on the field. “I did the Christmas tree lights on the field and she liked it,” reported her date.
This is definitely not the first article like this that I have seen, but they never stop being a little weird to me. In 2012, the Herald had a circulation of nearly half a million people. (“The Herald’s audience grew at a double-digit clip over the past year while the Globe saw significant declines during the same period,” gloated a May 2012 Herald article.) Gold-medalist or not, did it really need to cover the details of a teenage girl’s prom experience?
Necessary or not, they did it. And so we know that Aly ate a salad for dinner and had to leave early because her coach said so. And that her date wore gold accents to pay tribute to her quest for gold.
We know that Aly is just a super normal girl who never talks about the Olympics. After she won gold, her prom date sent her a message via Facebook Messenger, saying, “I’m sure she’ll respond with a smiley face or a heart. You know Aly.”
I don’t. But now I guess I do a little more than I did. Whether or not I should.
See more designs from the Needham set here.
Saturday, 19 August 2023—Phillips Andover Big Blue, Andover, MA

The August 15, 1835 issue of the anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator included a lengthy account by some Andover students of their strugges with the school adminstration to form an Anti-Slavery Society. I liked this passage of a letter that had been written and signed by eighty-eight Andover students:
It is not that we may gain popularity—we expect rather public odium. We expect to be branded with the epithets of fanatics, as the dupes of a wild phrenzy, of ignorant enthusiasm, and as zealots without knowledge. We see before us a fearful array of the great, the wise, and the good, those who will be ready to look upon us as actuated by a blind passion, rather than by cool judgment; as disturbers of the peace rather than as advocates of equal rights. But amid the universal din of anathemas and denunciations, we hear the still small voice whispering,—’Go on, and fear no evil, for I am with you.’ And how can we linger? Conscience must speak out. Her mandate must be heard. And when we walk as she plainly directs, with the consequences we have nothing to do. Committing ourselves therefore to the God of the oppressed, we feel prepared for the unequal contest. In your co-operation, Sir, your prayers and sympathies, we should indeed rejoice. But if you cannot conscientiously grant them, all we ask is the privilege of thinking and acting for ourselves.
See more designs from the Andover set here.
Sunday, 20 August 2023—Wellesley Raiders, Wellesley, MA

Wellesley High School was originally named Gamaliel Bradford High School, and just a week after the Andover students’ letter ran in the Liberator, there appeared a letter in the same paper from the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, signed by a number of its members—among them Gamaliel Bradford. The letter read (in part):
We are charged with violating, or wishing to violate, the Constitution of the United States. What have we done, what have we said, to warrant this charge? We have held public meetings, and taken other usual means of convincing our countrymen that slaveholding is a sin, and, like all sin, ought to be, and can be immediately abandoned. We have said, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, that ‘ALL MEN are created equal,’ and that liberty is an unalienable gift of God to every man. We appeal to the calm judgment of the community, to decide, in view of recent events, whether the measures of the friends, or those of the opposers of abolition, are more justly chargeable with the violation of the Constitution and laws. Have we opposed the freedom of speech? Have we attempted to prevent discussion, and disperse ordinary meetings by force? Have we incited mobs, burnt effigies, torn down dwellings, despoiled churches, put men to death without trial?
See more designs from the Wellesley set here.
See you next week! Tell your friends!