An ecological project led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers will see 40,000 trees planted by volunteers and local forestry organisations across the United States over the next eight years as a living monument to Black lives.
Conceived by the conceptual artist and professor Ekene Ijeoma, who founded the MIT research group Poetic Justice in 2019, Black Forest seeks to bring attention to the Covid-19 pandemic's impact on Black residents, whose death toll was twice that of white populations. Of the 1.1 million Americans who had died of the disease by fall 2023, 157,000 were Black.