This Little Light Of Mine: A Song History

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"This Little Light of Mine" is usually filed among the African American spirituals, though the hymnologist Chris Fenner calls it, more cautiously, a "spiritual or early gospel song," noting that its implied sixteen-bar structure and repeating text pattern place it alongside twentieth-century gospel songs[1]. Writers for the United Methodist Discipleship Ministries likewise find its development hard to trace, observing that none of the familiar anthologies of spirituals issued after the Civil War includes it[2]. The earliest firm traces found so far date from 1931: a Los Angeles pastor's announcement printed in the California Eagle on 8 May, and a Victor session in Louisville, Kentucky, on 14 June, at which the Louisville Sanctified Singers, a chorus of four women and five men with guitar and tambourines, recorded an early form of the song, issued as "God Give Me a Light" on Victor 23287[1][3]. Fenner gives Frances Albert Clark's Twelve Negro Spirituals for Men's Voices (1937) as its earliest confirmed printing[1].

Mezzotint of a smiling young woman holding a lit candle in a dark room

Nicholas Verkolje, Young Woman Holding a Candle in a Bedchamber, mezzotint, 1690–1715. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its candlelight; it has no connection to the song.

Recordings made for the Library of Congress show the song in Texas during the 1930s. John A. Lomax recorded Jim Boyd at the state penitentiary in Huntsville in 1934, and on 14 May 1939 John and Ruby Lomax recorded Doris McMurray at Gorree State Farm near Huntsville[1]; the Discipleship Ministries writers take the 1939 recording as a sign that versions of the song were probably already widely known[2]. The song is often credited to Harry Dixon Loes (1892–1965), a gospel song composer who taught at the Moody Bible Institute[1][2]. On this point the sources consulted here differ in emphasis. The Discipleship Ministries article judges it "as likely that he was the arranger rather than the composer"[2], while Fenner is firmer, calling the composer credit a mistake: Loes's arrangement, published by Singspiration in Gospel Songs Choruses No. 3 in 1943, came after the 1931 recording and the printings of 1937 and 1940, and what it added were several stanzas not found in earlier sources[1].

During the Civil Rights Movement the song became one of the freedom songs that sustained young activists of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)[2]. Among the activists who sang it was Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977)[2][4]. In August 1962 she was one of eighteen people from Sunflower County, Mississippi, who rode a bus from Ruleville to the courthouse in Indianola to try to register to vote; when police stopped the bus on the way home and made an arrest, she began to sing and calmed the other passengers[4]. Citing Robert Darden's 2016 study of Black sacred music, the Discipleship Ministries writers say she kept leading songs such as this one throughout the ordeal[2]. In 2015 Smithsonian Folkways included her singing it on Songs My Mother Taught Me, an album built around a rare 1963 recording of Hamer[5].

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Sources

  1. Hymnology Archive (Chris Fenner): "This Little Light of Mine".
  2. Discipleship Ministries (The United Methodist Church): "History of Hymns: This Little Light of Mine".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UCSB): "Victor matrix BVE-69433. God give me a light / Louisville Sanctified Singers".
  4. SNCC Digital Gateway: "Fannie Lou Hamer".
  5. Smithsonian Folkways: "Now Available: Songs My Mother Taught Me by Fannie Lou Hamer".