Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

An early reference to the older song, "Gospel Plow," is in Alan Lomax's 1949 book Our Singing Country.

The first is from English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians[4][5] published in 1917, indicating that Gospel Plow dates from at least the early twentieth century.

The lyrics to the modern Civil Rights version of the song, "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" are often attributed to Alice Wine from Johns Island, South Carolina.

The book Ain't You Got the Right to the Tree of Life by Guy and Candie Carawan[11] documents songs of the Moving Star Hall and the lives of African Americans on Johns Island in the early sixties.

The leading "Paul and Silas" stanzas in the modern "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" lyrics were already present in some versions of the older "Keep Your Hand on the Plow."

Carl Sandburg, in his 1927 book The American Songbag,[13] attributes these lyrics to yet another song entirely, "Mary Wore Three Links of Chain."

20 They brought them before the magistrates and said, "These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar 21 by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice."