With the cadences of Martin Luther King Jr and the lyricism of Langston Hughes the great civil rights activist Pauli Murrays sole book of poems finally returns to print There has been explosive interest in the life of Pauli Murray as reflected in a recent profile in The New Yorker the publication of a definitive biography and a new Yale University college in her name Murray has been suddenly cited by leading historians as a woman who contributed far more to the civil rights movement than anyone knew being arrested in 1940fifteen years before Rosa Parksfor refusing to give up her seat on a Virginia bus Celebrated by twentyfirstcentury readers as a civil rights activist on the level of King Parks and John Lewis she is also being rediscovered as a gifted writer of memoir sermons and poems Originally published in 1970 and long unavailable Dark Testament and Other Poems attests to her fierce lyrical powers At turns song prayer and lamentation Murrays poems speak to the brutal history of slavery and Jim Crow and the dream of racial justice and equality