This little light of mine

This little light of mine. African American spiritual*. This has many characteristics of an African American spiritual, and is sometimes designated as such in hymnals. Some authorities assign it to Harry Dixon Loes (1892/95-1965), a composer from Kalamazoo, Michigan, who studied and then taught at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. He wrote ‘Friends all around us are trying to find’, with the refrain ‘All that I want is in Jesus’. Another possibility is that Loes heard the spiritual and wrote or popularized the tune, but his name does not appear in any of the early recordings or publications.  It is claimed by the African American community as a spiritual...