Pauli Murray: Poet & Prophet

Pauli Murray’s gift to us is a rich collection of poems that invites us to engage emotionally and spiritually with the protester, priest, prophet, and writer who valued “confrontation by typewriter.”

For Pauli Murray, poetry was activism; the two concepts were inseparable. “When I was blocked from acting, it came out in words.” She invoked Walt Whitman in an epigraph: “I … am not contained in my hat and boots…” Pauli Murray invites us, by way of verse, to journey with her toward a deeper understanding of her intertwined identities. In “Dark Testament and Other Poems,” the poet bears witness to oppression and conflict, discrimination and cruelty, love and loss, and the complexities of race and intersectionality — while yearning for equality, true freedom, and inclusiveness.

With the background of the inevitable weariness of the “long, white winding highway,” and the sometime inability of language to convey reality, Pauli Murray summons hope, a steadfast belief in compassion and persistence, and ultimately the promise of redemption.

“Our poets are said to be our prophets,” states Murray in an interview for the Southern Oral  History Program Collection. To her, poetry was the highest form of action.  When asked about the connection between the lawyer’s use of language and the poet’s, Pauli expressed her firm belief that she devoted her life in the service of teaching both a sense of dignity and “relatedness” to other people.  This was ultimately her calling as a prophet.

Resources

Murray, Pauli and Elizabeth Alexander.   Dark Testament: And Other Poems.  NY: Liveright Publishing (W.W. Norton), 2018.

Peppard, Christina Z. “Poetry, Ethics, and the Legacy of Pauli Murray”.  Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 30(1):21-43, 2010.

Peppard, Christina Z. “Democracy, the Verb: Pauli Murray’s Poetry as a Resource for Ongoing Freedom Struggles.”  Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 29(1): 148-155, 2013.

Poetry Foundation.  Pauli Murray (1910-1985).

Audio

Interview with Nina Besser Doorley for Ms. Magazine, January 29,1977.

In this recording of audiotapes held by The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard University, Murray discusses  the influence of her family members on both her intellectual and prophetic qualities.  A segment of this audio treats her poetry:  poets who influenced her, her personal and writerly relationship with Benet, and how she came to write the epic, “Dark Testament”.  Other segments focus on other authors and writings that profoundly affected her.

Interview with Pauli Murray, February 13,1976. Interview G-0044. U. North Carolina. Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007.

In over five hours this file presents an interview by UNC Professor of History Genna McNeil.  Several discussions are related to her poetry.

  • Beginning at 1:28:12, she speaks about the influences of several poets:  Stephen Vincent Benet, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes.
  • Beginning at 1:30:00, she reads exerpts of poems and expands upon the themes they express, including activism, protest, and patriotism.
  • From 5:09:50, the interview closes with Murray reading from “Dark Testament”.