“This Little Light of Mine” is an African American spiritual or early gospel song whose author is unknown. Its earliest dated traces are from 1931: a Los Angeles church notice of 8 May 1931 mentions “Deaconess Anderson’s song,” and on 14 June 1931 the Louisville Sanctified Singers recorded a version called “God Give Me a Light” for Victor. John A. Lomax recorded Jim Boyd singing it at the State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas, around April 1934, and John and Ruby Lomax recorded Doris McMurray at the Goree State Farm near Huntsville on 14 May 1939. The first confirmed publication was in Frances Albert Clark’s Twelve Negro Spirituals for Men’s Voices (Theodore Presser, 1937).
The song draws on the passage in Matthew about not hiding a lamp under a bushel. The singer vows to let a small light shine: everywhere I go, all in my house, out in the dark, with new verses added over time to suit the occasion. Harry Dixon Loes of the Moody Bible Institute arranged it for Gospel Songs Choruses No. 3 (Singspiration, 1943), adding stanzas not found in earlier versions; he is often credited with writing it, but the Moody Bible Institute found no evidence that he did. The folk singer Bob Gibson added a bridge, recorded on his 1958 Riverside album and later printed in civil rights songbooks, and Zilphia Horton of the Highlander Folk School helped bring the song into the civil rights movement.
Gospel groups in the bluegrass and country tradition were recording it by the 1960s. The Country Gospel-Aires, with Zeke Hoskins on lead and guitar, included it on an Ark LP in 1963, and the Lewis Family recorded it in September 1967 for Starday’s All Day Singing & Dinner on the Ground (1968). The Abrams Brothers recorded it for Carrying On (MasterShield, 2005), and the Lindsey Family included a reprise, arranged by Marty Stuart, on their 2008 album Shine!.
