The (Actual) Tree Of Liberty

This Day

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's October 22nd. This day in 1999, in Annapolis, MD, the last of the so-called "Liberty Trees" was cut down.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss the original liberty trees that served as gathering spots for political ideas to be shared -- and political violence to play out -- during the American revolution. And they make the case for bringing back gatherings-under-trees as a political act.

https://thisdaypod.substack.com/

Find out more about the show at thisdaypod.com

This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories.

If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on our website: ThisDayPod.com

Get in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Follow us on social @thisdaypod

Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.
0:11.6	This day, October 1999, several hundred people gathered on the campus of St. John's College in
0:18.9	Annapolis, Maryland. I don't know if people have been there.
0:21.1	I've been there.
0:22.2	Very lovely campus.
0:26.6	It was a solemn affair, a small ceremony that day in October,
0:30.8	and the crowd watched as crews in hardhats with chainsaws began to take down a 400-year-old tulip poplar.
0:35.6	The tulip poplar usually only lives for a couple hundred years, so the fact
0:39.1	that this one was 400 years old was notable. But the really notable thing about this particular tree
0:44.4	was that it was the very last of the so-called Liberty trees. These were trees up and down the
0:49.7	East Coast from Boston all the way down to South Carolina that served as gathering spots for
0:54.3	revolutionary war adjutants. Under these trees, groups like the Sons of Liberty would meet
0:59.6	and plot and plant the seeds. I'm sorry if you're saying that. Plant the seeds for the
1:03.7	American Revolution. So let's talk about the last of the Liberty trees and how looking at the
1:09.1	American Revolution through an arboreal lens may change our understanding of this country's independence. Here, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello, Jody. Hey there. Each of you gets two, maybe three tree puns or metaphors. I've already used one, but that's our quota.
1:28.4	I think we can hit it.
1:29.7	You can live with that.
1:30.4	I think so, too. Yeah.
1:31.9	We can branch out after we cover two or three.
1:35.0	Oh, boy. Oh, boy. So, yeah. So look, we have this, we have this gathering. The tree, I should say, was
1:40.6	damaged by Hurricane Floyd. And that is ultimately what led to this poplar
1:46.4	having to come down. Again, 400 years old, pretty old for a tree. But let's start there in 99,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.