Over the past couple of years, Paul periodically featured contributions from Uni Watch reader Tom Roddy, who teaches history to 11th graders in Henderson, Nevada. When his students do a unit each year on the New Deal, Roddy has each of them design a uniform for a fictitious basketball team based on a New Deal government program — an ingenious way to merge American history and uniforms. You can see some of those here, here, and here.
Now that I’ve taken over the Editor duties from Paul, Tom reached out directly to me with this year’s crop:
Hi Phil,
This is Tom Roddy. We did meet at at Paul’s retirement party back in May. I am the teacher that does the New Deal Uniform assignment with his US History Classes. Well, it’s that time of year again, and I thought I’d pass along the best of this year’s crop. There are 12 different uniforms this year. It’s so hard to pick when I have over 100 to choose from. This year, I tried to pick ones that are similar in topic, but wildly different in interpretation. There’s different options for the Social Security Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, Electric Home and Farm Authority, and a few more that I thought were some inspired bits of design. Enjoy!
Thanks again for all the work you’ve done to keep Uni Watch alive. Keep up the great work!
Tom Roddy
Let’s take a look at each of those now.
Works Progress Administration:
National Industrial Recovery Act:
Gold Reserve Act:
Agricultural Adjustment Act:
Social Security Act:
Electric Home and Farm Authority:
National Youth Administration:
Tennessee Valley Authority:
Income and Wealth Taxes:
Electric Home and Farm Authority:
How great are these? Please join me in thanking Tom for sharing these with us, and for the important work he does as a teacher. Looking forward to seeing the next assignment in 2025!
These are soooooooo good! One of my favorite UW segments! Basketball uniform design meets historical consciousness, such a brilliant and vreative idea. All of them are awesome but my favorite this year is the TVA with the Grizzlies connections.
TVA is dam good.
link
Great historical awareness, too, of a uniform that only briefly existed years before the artist was born.
This is one of the highlights of the year on Uni Watch, at least for me. How I wish I had a teacher like Mr. Roddy! The closest I had was a high school music teacher who had us compose original songs for projects (both instrumental and on the computer), but that was a much more obvious progression.
If memory serves me correctly, this is the best-produced set of uniforms I’ve seen from this series.
Well done! And a good use of uni storytelling for a change.
Wow, Tom, what a great concept to tap into the ingenuity and creativity of your students! Ranging from the simplicity to the complexity (sorry for all the -ity) of the uniform designs you selected, you should be very proud of how your students really tapped into the assignment. I certainly hope your district’s art teachers enjoy seeing the students’ creative minds at work as well. Especially with the TVA uni sets, teams like the Grizzlies and UT Vols should be inspired to honor these historical acts on special uniforms, even next year but really thinking about the centenary years in the mid-2030s.
Keep up the great work in applying such a cool idea and connecting with your 11th-graders every year!
Thanks everyone for your positive responses. I am glad so many of you look forward to this like I do each year! Terry, it never even occurred to me that teams could tap into this idea over the next decade plus, such an interesting take.
As always, this is awesome! I love the Civilian Conservation Corps uniform.
Literally crying from how good this concept and these uniforms are. BRAVO!!!!
Love these!
I’m a middle school math teacher & currently am having my students create “art” to express their understanding of rational & irrational numbers. I just might add uniform design to the menu of choices!
Great job, students! I enjoyed the designs and explanations and I even learned some new things about the New Deal!
Extra tip of the cap to the maker of the SSA uniform for even including a number. Very clever idea!
Well done, all around.
Extremely long-time lurker and first-time commenter here. My grandfather actually played basketball for a CCC camp in Tennessee in the 1930s. On their down time, camps that were forming what would become the Great Smoky Mountains National Park would form small basketball teams and travel to each others’ camps to play ball. Camps in that area would typically have free time twice a day, and once of those may have been used for “class.” Camps even claimed regional and national championships, as my grandfather’s Cades Cove camp did in 1934. Their uniforms were the same as schools/universities in the 1930s, but without words, numbering, or other designs. Holidays, where the men would have all day off, were opportunities for tournaments. Boxing and baseball were also popular in that area for CCC camps.
What a great annual tradition! My faves this year are the orange TVA, the SSA 67, and the CCC uniforms.