Dark Testament and Other Poems --Originally published in 1970- By Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray

Prophecy
I sing of a new American
Separate from all others,
Yet enlarged and diminished by all others,
I am the child of kings and serfs, freemen and slaves,
Having neither superiors nor inferiors,
Progeny of all colors, all cultures, all systems, all beliefs.
I have been enslaved, yet my spirit is unbound.
I have been cast aside, but I sparkle in the darkness.
I have been slain but live on in the rivers of history.
I seek no conquest, no wealth, no power, no revenge;
I seek only discovery
Of the illimitable heights and depths of my own being.
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As Pauli Murray neared 60 years old, she was still cultivating her growth and self awareness. Her poetry began to celebrate more of her inner self. While a professor at Brandies, Cambridge, Massachusetts, (1969), she wrote "Prophecy", which speaks about her soul being freed from limits.

Murray was a woman who contributed far more to the civil rights movement than anyone knew, being arrested in 1940―fifteen years before Rosa Parks―for refusing to give up her seat on a Virginia bus.
Dark Testament and Other Poems attests to her fierce lyrical powers as a gifted writer of memoir, sermons, and poems.

At turns song, prayer, and lamentation, Murray’s poems speak to the brutal history of slavery and Jim Crow and the dream of racial justice and equality.