Dark testament

For readers discovering the great civil rights activist Pauli Murray, here, at last returned to print, is Dark Testament and Other Poems, Murray's sole poetry collection and a revelatory work crucial to her identity as "rebel, instigator, survivor...opener-of-doors, and always a devout child of God and friend to mankind" (Patricia Bell-Scott). Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Alexander illuminated in her introduction how Murray's poems lay bare the brutal history of slavery and Jim Crow while holding up the dream of racial justice and human connection. "Poetry," she says, "was where [Murray]…