Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Tree

In the 1980s, Cornell planted a pine tree near King Chapel to honor Martin Luther King Jr., who spoke at Cornell in 1962. Its history has been a difficult one; the tree has been vandalized and even cut down. But each time it has been replanted, and Ken Morris, Cornell’s director of intercultural life, thinks that makes it a good symbol of the civil rights movement, as each time the college came together and replanted the tree as a commitment to King and the cause of equality.